How to monetize the land in rural Spain? Orygen has an idea
The startup expert is obsessed with the vertical. Knowing what sector a technology-based company operates in is a way to calculate its chances of success.. Everyone today assumes that fintech, for example, is more scalable than a cultural marketplace. And yet, sometimes entrepreneurship comes up with transversal ideas that are difficult to categorize.
This is what happens with Orygen, a startup born only in 2022, already backed by Demium Capital, directed by Victoria Hermida and committed to combining cleantech, proptech and even agrotech thanks to a digital platform that connects owners of rural land with project developers. around reforestation, agriculture and in general those organizations that want to offset their carbon footprint.
Hermida releases some interesting data. In Spain, he points out, 70% of the land is disused and 80% is rural. People who work in the fields, he adds, retire unstoppably without there being a generational change.. “Essentially we are trying to demonstrate that rustic land can be monetized and create opportunities.”
Orygen's tool uses cadastral references to analyze the soil case by case and determine what type of plantation makes sense based on the resilience of each tree species and the weather forecast for more than 50 years.. If, for example, Sylvestris (Repsol) is looking for a forestry project, Orygen will be their perfect link to find the right land and the land owner will charge for it.
Industries such as wood and paper, renewable firms (obliged when they deploy a photovoltaic plant to develop a reforestation plan in parallel) or farmers focused on fruit trees also enter the perimeter of influence of the startup, which aims to close a second investment round of half a million euros in April. This operation is key to 100% implementing AI on the platform, Hermida anticipates.
Orygen offers a second service to land owners and here acts as a proptech: it helps them appraise and sell land with an eye on the investor interested in adding an agricultural operation to their portfolio.. The CEO assures that this segment is very dynamic and registers increasingly important operations.
So far, the Orygen tool has analyzed 20,000 hectares and has more than 20 clients (project development companies). “This is a 100% scalable business. With artificial intelligence it is possible to study any land anywhere on the planet in a matter of seconds and determine what is the best use to make it profitable.”
Hermida cites two cases of owners who have managed to breathe new life into their possessions. A businessman who manages a rural hotel in Alicante has managed to turn his large, deserted property into a forest, with the additional attraction that this represents for the guest.. Another owner, this time from Extremadura, has decided to flood his estate with cork oaks: they take between 35 and 40 years to grow but once they are mature they generate 90,000 euros in cork per hectare.
“Our next objective is to have a wide network of local companies to hire inhabitants of the area every time we repopulate an area, also measuring the demographic and economic impact that these dynamics have,” advances the entrepreneur located in Madrid in what seems another round of socks to breathe color into that forgotten Spain.