Memo
2022

DAS is on a mission to build a modern SaaS and data product stack for the future of agri-financial services and enterprise. 

Almost five years ago, DAS pioneered its vision for rural intelligence – one where we put science into the hands of decision-makers, transforming how decisions are made in the businesses surrounding agriculture for a safer, more resilient, more prosperous, more sustainable world. 

A product-focused fintech, DAS is already the location-intelligence leader in Australia with its rural intelligence and risk platform that leading agri-financial services and enterprises depend on.  

DAS hasn’t just digitized 371+M hectares of Australian and New Zealand agricultural land – it has made
it useful for companies like Rabobank, JLL, Cargill, Nutrien and IAG, who all depend on DAS to map, visualize, verify and monitor agri-customers, assets and portfolios in a high-risk, dynamic climate.  

• Today, Rabobank uses DAS to virtually appraise every single farmland property in its Australian and New Zealand portfolio – easily visualising changes to agri parcels bought & sold, getting comprehensive sales data, and crucial predictors of land value like productivity, rainfall or drought stress.
  
  

• Cargill uses DAS to automatically map and better understand its customers, enriching its own CRM (Salesforce) with 50+ new data points unique to each customer – including early intelligence on what crops their customers are currently growing, have grown in the past 3+ years, or share of wallet
  
  

• IAG uses DAS to monitor the biggest agri-insurance portfolio in Australia and New Zealand - bringing greater precision to what’s insured, risk selection and pricing while empowering their frontline teams with automatic reports  they can share with clients, including on climate risk, making communities safer.

DAS data and SaaS products are subscription based, with the majority of our revenue coming from multi-year contracts. DAS Data Services completes the picture, with a dedicated earth observation team applying machine learning and AI algorithms to new products and datasets that support our
core growth and risk offerings. 

Product & Technology 

DAS’ “one product, one platform” tech is a unified system of data, workflow, CRM and integration tools. 

Over the past 12+ months, DAS has completely reimagined and reframed how we think about our product and technology, so customers can access DAS Intel how they want it, when they want it, in the way they want it.

Today, our category-defining, cloud platform is progressively modular – meaning customers select only the functionality, features, data characteristics and geographic coverage they want.

This functionality is delivered in two primary ways:

1. Via the main DAS platform itself:
   with customers choosing to work in the DAS platform, with all the workflow, visualisation, data input, overlay and reporting capability it delivers or
   
   

2. Via DAS CRM & integration tools:
   with customers choosing to work in their own systems – ingesting and enriching the intelligence they already hold with high-value DAS insights. 

Many customers choose to work in both. And no matter how enterprise customers choose to access DAS Intel, their rich data is fused, integrated and overlaid with DAS data, creating lock-in and value.

Data Structure 

DAS ingests five (5) core categories of data spanning public, commercial, customer, science and our own R&D.

This data structure is agile and scalable – DAS has spent close to five years identifying, translating and deploying datasets that are essential to the way agri-finance operates. We today have the ability to easily identify, ingest, enrich, and integrate datasets from a multitude of sources, providing a fast and seamless route to market.

The more data we add, or our customers add, the more powerful DAS becomes, increasing the flywheel, value and use cases we can deliver.

SaaS Modules, New Extensions & Integrations 

In 2018, DAS had around four modules or “hubs” on its platform; by 2020 we were up to seven-plus modules, features and functionality; and by the end of 2022, we’ll be at approximately 15 modules, including our upcoming Portfolio Management and API.

We are now redefining how we go to market, as we build out our full suite of product technology and features. 

These modules are delivered across four core packages – Explore, Engage, Collaborate & Predict – to support the customer continuum and digitisation curve. The different packages are based on the complexity of requirements, and the value to be derived.

Explore is a view-only option, with basic DAS datasets and the ability to search, assess and generate an automatic report on any asset. Investors and real-estate agents are users. 

Engage sees business users add their input to DAS data via sector-specific workflow, DAS has built three (3) sector-specific workflows – valuation or appraisals, insurance plus rural asset or property - all designed to work the way different industry professionals do. 

Deeper asset-level views and digital reports combining DAS Intel with client intel are created by users, not just digitizing end-to-end processes but delivering substantial savings and efficiencies. 

For instance, customers tell DAS that complex agri-appraisals that used to take days, now take hours. In New Zealand, one lender tells us they’ve empowered hundreds of frontline bankers with our software so they can build better relationships – and translate those relationships into revenue. 

A standard data package is offered. 

Insurance agents and brokers, bankers and valuers are common Engage users, along with real estate agents.  Customers work in the DAS platform under Engage. 

Collaborate is defined by seamless data fusion. Not only can users add their own information, images, “pins”, analysis, and intelligence to enrich their own customer knowledge, they can “plug” DAS into their own software systems. 

What DAS knows: Our software is simply one tool in our customers’ software ecosystem - and synchronising customer knowledge to deal with traditional siloed systems and fragmented approaches will become even more important. 

Collaborate allows any enterprise to “start their DAS journey” easily and simply via new DAS customer data integration tools like Locate – our  “plug and play” mapping and data extension that enriches customer or asset profiles already held by our customers. 

Originally, DAS required its users to move their data into our own platform to conduct their analysis – now DAS is being built to run within existing CRM software and systems, so this is a significant advance forward. This will soon include a (bi-directional) API. 

In future, customers will have the ability to embed DAS into enriched customer account profiles within their CRMs - further increasing the precision, value and accuracy of existing tools like Salesforce. 

Collaborate represents a premium DAS data package, inclusive of basic and standard data as well as high-value productivity intelligence like Net Productivity Potential - a science-supported proxy for plant growth and yield. 

Entire financial services and agri-enterprises are users of Collaborate - with customers able to work in both the DAS platform and their own systems. 

Predict is all about “unfolding the future” via current data analysis. 

This takes in our Portfolio Management and Monitoring capability that will soon enable analysis, comparison and benchmarking across entire agri-portfolios.

Predict represents a premium-plus product and data package - all the Collaborate data plus trading intelligence (originally known as the DAS Cropping Hub, which in 2022 delivered predictions months ahead of official government estimates. 

Predict also includes DAS “Farm or Risk Scores”, now in development. 

The key differentiator for Predict is the ability to look at analysis over entire portfolios, not just individual assets or customers - including climate prediction maps that can be queried and captured; dedicated dashboards; and intelligence that can be integrated with our clients’ own business tools. 

Each module or package represents different functionality, as well as different data packages - from basic to standard and premium to premium plus. Any data package can be upgraded to a different package - adding to the flexible and adaptive nature of the DAS “one product, one platform” as a whole. 

Some packages build on one another - if you Engage you also get Explore. Collaborate and Predict stand alone but include both Explore and Engage functionality. 

Flexibility is core. For instance, Locate “Map”, our entry-level integration tool, can be used by customers who Engage, but must upload and geospatially map their assets or farms first, with the click of a button - something you have to do before you can even begin to integrate or overlay data with climate risk, productivity or sustainability insight. 

All module functionality and packages can be supplemented with “add on” DAS data services – for instance, specific earth observation capabilities or custom analysis. Services are primarily used as a driver to “land and expand” in client companies. 

A New Way to Understand Customers, Assets & Portfolios

DAS believes that every (farm) asset is a polygon to be digitized – spanning vertical, horizontal, customer, time and real-time intelligence.  

From this vantage point, we are creating a new, multi-dimensional model and way for our customers to understand their customers. 

This “modern digital ID for farmland assets, customers and portfolios” gives any enterprise to “see the polygon that’s important to them”. The DAS approach:

• Synchronises what the world’s biggest financial services and agri-enterprises already know about their customers with the highest value  data – including building/structures, earth observation, climate, productivity, risk and value 

• Modernises what it means to “understand your client” in financial services and agri enterprise – delivering a geospatial, digital ID framework, principles, record and knowledge stack for farmland or agri-customers 

• Gives decision-makers a completely new way to understand and target agri-clients and assets – solving multiple pain points up and down both financial services and agri-enterprises everywhere.
  
  
  

We believe our approach will be a default expectation of the market in the coming years. It: 

• Redefines what it means to know your agri-client/customer/asset or portfolio

• Recognises that modern-day assessment of (farm) land/customers must go beyond traditional metrics like sales data, loan-to-value ratio or claims history to recognise productivity and climate, in tandem with buildings or structures

• Is applicable to any (farm) land customer or asset, anywhere in the world, from mega-corporate portfolios to the smallest hobby landholdings. 

We are using this model to help some of the world’s largest, most visionary, most complex leaders solve global problems like: 

• Standardized, common and adaptive global IDs for all (farm)land assets & customers

• Standardised Risk Scores/ Risk Scoring system on agri-centric assets for global boards, exec teams and workforces (currently in development)

• Better physical risk reporting (enabled by our Portfolio product, in development)

The goal is 100% visibility and understanding of (farm) land assets, portfolios and customers
– including real-time event mapping and traction. Think “see the polygon of your customer”,
down to field or farm level.  

Why Investors Back DAS

• Agri-Financial Services is huge – but the DAS offering is not limited to just that. Real estate, input providers, commodity traders, and corporate landholdings – any arable land asset or customer can benefit from DAS tech and model. 

• There is no equivalent platform in the market globally. No company has the integrated insight that DAS is providing – via its platform that allows you to visualise, map or monitor – or its “plug and play” Locate integration options. That insight is going global - as is DAS. 

• Proven ability to sell to and work with enterprises at scale.  Enterprise sales cycles are long and complex – but DAS has demonstrated it can win and deliver large, multi-year SaaS contracts.  New offerings and integrations will offer new ways for customers to buy including an immediate, low-cost entry point.  Our guardrails for new customers is that they will deliver greater than $50K revenue per annum, with target ARR of $250K per enterprise customer, per year.

• Strong tailwinds. DAS is early on in its journey. Agribusiness is one of the most complex and opaque industries in the world – digitisation is necessary and great but it is finance that fundamentally has the power to reward and change the system. To do that it needs the right data and workflow. 

• Focus. With the rising plethora of agritech players including a multitude of on-farm technology players, DAS is focused on the ecosystem that supports global agribusiness - including fundamentally changing the way the ecosystem is financed, insured and rewarded.  Most investment in agriculture is farmer-centric. 

• Integration & synchronization. DAS has learnt what makes it so successful – it is not just its SaaS workflow, but the way its data pipeline can be connected and integrated with our customers’ best-in-class knowledge. This is the future – it is about subscription software that DAS sells, but it is also about data as a service offering the same recurring revenue. 

• Strategic Relationships. No other player has the relationships DAS has. This includes industry leaders like Rabobank and IAG, as well as a partnership with the CSIRO, Australia's National Science Agency and one of the largest multidisciplinary science and technology organisations in the world. These relationships feed into the DAS product cycle, ensuring we scale global SaaS and data products.  That is the phase DAS is in now. 

• Speed & scalability of its data pipeline. DAS has spent considerable time scoping what’s important and what’s not when it comes to agri-finance and agri-enterprise specific data. This data is easily piped into DAS’ own offerings, meaning DAS can replicate, speed and scale faster.  

• Globally-focused. DAS is focused on scaling globally, having proven out its product in selected markets – the vision from the start – along with the biggest problems agri-financial services and lending is seeking to solve globally. This is informing our US strategy, as we seek to strengthen and grow our product-market fit and focus on repeatable sales. We focus on the largest 10,000 agri-enterprises and financial institutions in the world. DAS 2021 entry into New Zealand was used to create a playbook for global expansion. 

• Productised. Every customer has a unique set of questions and objectives – but DAS is focused on only building what can be scaled across geographies and markets – with any “add on” services only undertaken if of strategic value. DAS is a product-focused company – we offer multiple categories of products and use cases from the one system. 

• We deeply understand the work of agri-finserv and agri-enterprise teams. We care a lot about helping those teams avoid manual or low value work so they can focus on higher-value work like risk management or targeted growth, all the way through to bringing new business products and models to market. 

What Gap does DAS meet in the market?

Our products, B2B Enterprise SaaS and data, ensure that insurers, investors, banks and agri-centric enterprises everywhere – anyone who is invested in the nascent asset that is arable land – can map, visualise and monitor those assets or customers seamlessly, and in a connected, integrated way.

Our product is the only product to offer integrated view that delivers in tandem:

• Climate intelligence

• Agri intelligence 

• Location intelligence 

• Productivity intelligence 

• Sales intelligence 

• Structures intelligence 

• Public domain intelligence 

Location intelligence has already changed how retail, logistics and other industries work by bringing the digital and physical together. DAS is now bringing that same capability to (agri) financial services – what we call “putting science into the hands of decision makers”. 

How Big is This? 

DAS sits at the intersection of a series of massive markets. 

From banking and insurance to investment management to agri-real estate, financial services – in tandem with the world’s most important agri-enterprises – are realizing that they need new tools and data to improve efficiency, take advantage of opportunities and manage a growing plethora of risks enveloping the landscape. This includes: 

Financial Services: A mega market projected to reach at least $28.5 trillion by 2025. Many global finserv markets are experiencing extraordinary growth rates – for example, the AU finserv market was worth $10.9 trillion alone in June 2021 (Roy Morgan).

Geospatial Intelligence:  The global geospatial analytics market size was valued at $60.94 billion in 2020, and is projected to reach $209.47 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 13.0% from 2021 to 2030.

Risk Analytics: The market size of Climate Risk Analystics alone is valued at $40 billion today, with climate adaptation expected to double to $2 trillion over the next 5 years. While this space is heating up, it is not well synchronized with agriculture-specific attributes.

Environmental Monitoring:  This market size is expected to be worth $26.7 Billion by 2025

Agritech: This market size is expected to be worth US$ 41 Billion by 2027.

Agribusiness itself is a $5 trillion global industry that is only getting bigger. 

Why DAS is Important 

By building the best SaaS company dedicated to the global agri-financial services space, we believe we will: 

Create fairer financing & insurance for everyone:   This starts with farmers, who may not be DAS’s customers, but are significant beneficiaries of access to and innovation in financial services to support their livelihood. 

Create safer environments for everyone:  Predicting risk in a changing climate starts with quantifying physical risk, whether simplistic or sophisticated, at both asset + portfolio levels. 

Protect & feeding a growing population:  Improving the risk model surrounding agri-financial services
is at the centre of DAS, connecting the future of food to true risk and visibility.

The DAS team is made up of all sorts of people: from highly experienced product, tech, development and engineering, to earth observation and geospatial talent, entrepreneurs and business executives, to passionate customer success professionals and sales experts, all supported by some of the world’s leading earth & data scientists. 

DAS was born out of a partnership with Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO. 

While not everyone knows who CSIRO is outside of its home country, if you're reading this online, the chances are you're using WiFi, invented by CSIRO. 

CSIRO may not have put a man on the moon, but they do partner with NASA and the European Space Agency and are one of the world's largest, mission-driven, multi-disciplinary science and research organisations.

CSIRO is DAS' founding equity investor and our origins reflect our deep commitment to what we today call: "putting science into the hands of decision makers."

Over the last few weeks we've been showcasing some of our diverse and dynamic team members - here's a few of the people that make DAS happen, as we build our company.