Staff
VividGro, a manufacturer of high-quality LED grow lighting products acquired cannabis home grow app company WeGrow, for an undisclosed amount. The app has had over 20,000 downloads in the iTunes Store. The product was first launched in April 2017 using chatbot based technology that has simplified the learning process of growing cannabis using personalized conversations.
“VividGro acquired WeGrow to further its transition from a provider of LED lighting solutions to being an integrated AgTech company that provides crop-agnostic hardware and software solutions to indoor farmers of all varieties and sizes,” said David Friedman, VividGro’s President. Friedman added, “WeGrow’s superior technology supports this transition. We plan to rapidly expand the functionality of WeGrow’s chatbot platform for the home grow market and extend our reach to licensed cannabis cultivators worldwide”.
“We’re excited to have completed this sale less than a year after launching our first smartbot,” said Mason Levy, CEO of Education Bot, Inc. “VividGro is a perfect partner who will advance our vision of WeGrow while expanding into every aspect of horticulture — from cannabis to tomatoes.“
Many states that have legalized medical marijuana usually allow some form of in-house growing for a set amount of plants. This has spawned a cottage industry catering to the home grower. A 2017 Harris poll shows that 8.8 million, or 16% of all adults, would grow marijuana if it were legal to do so in their state. The survey also finds that the age group most likely to grow their own cannabis is millennials, the target market for a chatbot platform.
Besides growing marijuana VividGro’s expansion of the platform could be used to serve other crops and address the growing needs of indoor home gardeners. As indoor growing becomes easier more people are looking at growing their own greens and some vegetables like tomatoes in their homes. Restaurants are also looking at this trend of indoor growing and while it can’t supply an entire restaurant’s needs, customers respond well to seeing a wall of indoor grown food sources inside the restaurant.
WeGrow’s chatbot technology is designed for users to engage via a conversation with the platform, which uses artificial intelligence to provide proactive insights to optimize the performance of home gardens or commercial operations.
The WeGrow founding team continues to enhance smartbot-based engagement under the Swivl brand. VividGro is the horticultural LED division of Lighting Science Group. VividGro implements solutions that improve growers’ profitability by lowering operating costs, increasing efficiencies and yields, and decreasing cycle times.
