The Opportunity
Protecting crucial farming machinery
Around the world, farms and rural communities are increasingly becoming targets of theft due to their isolated locations. According to NFU Mutual, an insurance provider to the agriculture industry, losses to British farms hit a seven year high in 2018, with a 26% rise in claims over 2017 driven by thefts of vehicles including tractors and quad-bikes.
A single piece of stolen equipment can generate upwards of several hundred thousand dollars on the illegal market, and the underground market for stolen farming equipment is robust. Researchers point to the existence of a “sophisticated international criminal business” operated by traditional organized crime groups (OCGs) such as the Italian, Polish, and Turkish syndicates.
Given the sophisticated and coordinated nature of this criminal activity, farmers are caught off guard and have limited preventative measures. The constant risk of theft hurts farmers beyond the immediate financial loss of their machinery. Even after filing a successful insurance claim, it can take months to replace highly specialized equipment. Theft thus threatens lasting, long-term damage to crop yields and livelihoods.
Go4ioT founder Pascal Lavaur saw an opportunity to apply cutting-edge IoT technology to address agricultural equipment theft. He and his team have developed a programmable connected anti-theft device called KHIKO that can detect suspicious equipment movements and send alerts via SMS, email notifications, or even voice calls.
Use cases for KHIKO have now expanded well beyond agriculture to offer protection for construction equipment, boating vehicles, classic cars, camping cars and other commercial machinery.
“It’s a very sturdy device that’s small enough to hide,” says Lavaur. “You can clamp it on to the agricultural device to monitor activity. If an asset starts to move during the night; for instance, KHIKO will start tracking the asset with a GPS. Wireless data connection enables continuous tracking of the asset and recovery.”