Kodalfa was founded in the U.S. and has successfully served hundreds of businesses in Turkey's greenhouse-tomato-grower market since 2005. Kodalfa has returned to the U.S. market as ClimateMinder, Inc., and is headquartered in Los Angeles.
Terms of the agreement with Partners 1993 include:
- Establishing ClimateMinder, Inc. as a U.S. corporation with existing CEO Bulut Ersavas remaining as CEO.
- Partners 1993 founder and Chairman Val Babajov becoming President and a board member of ClimateMinder, Inc.
- Continuing Kodalfa Ltd. in the Turkish market as a wholly owned subsidiary of the U.S. corporation, and
- Partners 1993 taking a minority stake in the company with investments in the form of cash and software-development services.
ClimateMinder, Inc. provides growers early warning against frost and disease risks and puts an end to their costs to install wiring in their greenhouses or farm fields. Its system controller uses machine-to-machine (M2M) mobile mesh-network technology to transmit data from the field or greenhouse direct to growers' mobile phones, PDAs or computers. The mobile technology allows farmers to receive alerts to conditions that threaten their crops and to take actions even when they are located far from their fields or greenhouses.
ClimateMinder is focusing initially on California's extensive agricultural market and aims to become the world's top provider of M2M technology solutions in open-field and greenhouse agriculture. Small to mid-sized farms or greenhouses can contract for ClimateMinder on a monthly basis, while large-scale operations can purchase end-to-end systems outright. The first systems are expected to be available in the fourth quarter of this year.
"We have had great success providing affordable, high-tech mobile solutions to tomato growers in Turkey. The move to the U.S. market will accelerate our growth," said ClimateMinder founder and CEO Bulut Ersavas, whose company is known as Kodalfa in Turkey. "The American market is looking for flexible technology solutions that either can stand on their own or complement existing greenhouse-control systems to address portability, microclimates, local practices and backup for primary systems."
Partners 1993 has been developing and delivering innovative mobile solutions for more than 15 years. Led by Babajov, Partners 1993 created WebMessenger, the first mobile instant messaging solution that supported both enterprise and consumer markets.
Babajov sold WebMessenger to a public communications company in mid 2008 and retained his core mobile development team to work on his investment projects in telecommunications and mobile applications.
Over the past year Babajov has made four investments as an angel in technology companies in mobile video, licensing of mobile software, internet social radio and now ClimateMinder. He plans to expand the mobile components of ClimateMinder to a range of M2M and handset devices in the U.S. and to integrate smart mobile technology with key control systems.
"Our investment in ClimateMinder is a perfect match for our portfolio and our strategy of venture engineering," said Babajov. "With our expertise in mobile and back-end applications, our development team is already looking for new areas in which to expand M2M technology."
About Partners 1993
Partners 1993 Inc., based in the Los Angeles suburb of Tujunga, CA, is a software development and services company focused on mobile applications. It is a spinoff of the award-winning mobile product company, WebMessenger Inc., which was acquired in 2008. Since 1993, the company has delivered custom mobile, desktop, client/server, multimedia and scalable distributed Web systems to both startup and public companies in the United States and in Europe.
About ClimateMinder
ClimateMinder, Inc. develops complete wireless sensor network solutions for smart agriculture and food industry applications. ClimateMinder's inherently flexible software / hardware integration techniques resolve commercialization issues of sensor networks by optimizing efficiency and speeding up the development process. Large scale distributed systems built with small-size and low-cost sensors are powerful tools for sensing activities and interacting with the physical environment. Although sensor networks are very powerful, they present challenges like energy efficiency, data transfer reliability and scalability. ClimateMinder uses industry standards and its cutting edge technology to build reliable, manageable and energy-efficient sensor systems. It provides affordable, proven and dependable solutions by employing open standards and architectures.