Heading to Seattle - Team KSF.LCC UK Imagine Cup National Finalist

ROOT (Remote Observation & Operation Technology) won the 3rd Prize & Special Imagination Award – John Brengman Award for Innovation. chosen by John’s family

The Microsoft Imagine Cup 2017 tool place London 21 April and the top 3 teams will travel to the Global Final in Seattle, USA July for a chance to win $100,000

Guest blog by  Keisuke Kishi, a farmer from Japan, CEO of KSF.LLC and current MBA candidate at University of Oxford, UK.

ROOT & OUR FARM

Are my team project which is the world’s first remote and interactive farming platform for urban consumers to join, learn and enjoy agriculture from anywhere at any time via smart devices. As a farmer, I try to disrupt business model itself in agriculture, especially small farming, through this project and I am so happy that Microsoft UK Team and the Imagine Cup judges appreciated my passion!!

I am really grateful to both programs of my MBA (Said Business School, University of Oxford) and this Microsoft Imagine Cup. While MBA program gives me theoretical understanding of markets, technologies, entrepreneurship and investors, the Imagine Cup mentor gives me more practical insights on how to build my business on new ideas and, of course, how to win the competition!! (Actually, my Imagine Cup mentor’s comments were really demanding, relentless but worthwhile for sure because he has extensive hands-on work experience with some startups in agri-tech field.)

Azure Cloud

Another exciting thing in Imagine Cup is that we can use Microsoft Azure Cloud Service and explore the potential for our own ideas with technical supports from MS experts. This is great for me especially because I am struggling to build functions of data collection from IoT devices, data-analysis, simulation and machine learning (auto response to customers etc.). Microsoft Azure has extensive features in all of these relevant fields.

Getting these invaluable supports, ROOT is experiencing a big breakthrough. Please check the current status, here.

I am enjoying the process to Global Final in USA while improving my agri-tech initiative in every part of technology, design and business planning with Microsoft UK and look forward to showing my passion for agriculture again to US judges with ROOT.

Keisuke Kishi
MBA Class of 2017
Chair, Oxford Business Network for Agri-Business
Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
L: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keisuke-kishi-4a294a137/

Founder & CEO, KSF. LLC
W: https://ksf-llc.co.jp
F: https://www.facebook.com/ksf.llc/
E: ksf_info@ksf-llc.co.jp