GOLD AWARD

BLACK AWARD

FOUNDERS

Scott Massey

Founder & CEO

Scott Massey received his B.S. at Purdue University in Mechanical Engineering in Technology and Certificate of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in 2017 at Purdue University. Scott exited a career as an engineer in the oil and natural gas industry to become a research engineer at the Purdue University Horticulture College. In this role, Scott assisted in the design of a NASA-funded, automated hydroponic plant growth chamber with the goal of sustainably growing food in space colonies. This project inspired him to found Heliponix© (formerly Hydro Grow LLC) his senior year, which was backed by Purdue Ventures Ag-celerator agricultural/biological Engineering Research Fund, Elevate Ventures, and the National Science Foundation. Today, the company employs several engineers and is expanding its network of deployed GroPod© Smart Garden Appliances, which has been named “Indiana’s Best New Tech Product” by TechPoint through the Mira Award and granted the “People’s Choice Award” by the Institute of Food Technologists through the Food Disruption Challenge. Scott has participated in two Reciprocal Exchanges at the Department of State through the Mandela Washington Fellowship, one of which involved traveling to Cameroon, Africa in 2019 to facilitate workshops on sustainable agriculture in 2017 in Togo, Africa.

Ivan Ball

Co-founder and CTO

Ivan Ball began his career as an Electrical Engineering Co-op his sophomore year while working towards his B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology with a minor in OLS, Organizational Leadership and Supervision at Purdue University in 2017. His co-op allowed him to explore the sophistication of a large scale food safe manufacturer. While on campus, Ivan received a job as a Research Engineer at the Purdue Horticulture College designing and testing an automated hydroponic plant growth chamber for the NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training Cuvette where he met Scott Massey as a coworker. Ball has extensive hands on experience growing crops in a controlled environmental chamber using variable light spectra. Ivan is the co-inventor of the rotary aeroponic method of growing plants in a controlled chamber.

PROFILE

Front-End Development

The Heliponix, LLC website www.gropod.io has some issues and updates that need to be addressed. The ecommerce website has a checkout for both individual products and a subscription service. It is a custom built HTML/CSS website built on a react framework. A react web application is built into the website to allow users to view account details, view order history, monitor an IoT device telemetry dashboard, share images to social media, and customize their subscription.

Project Type: One-time project

Skills and expertise

Business Size Experience - Very Small (1-9 employees)

Front-End Development Languages

SQL
JavaScript
CSS
CSS3
Less

Front-End Development Deliverables

Web Application
Website
eCommerce Website
Responsive Design

Front-End Development Skills

React
Node.js

Other

Ecommerce Platform Development
React Native
Web Apps

Preferred qualifications
Job Success Score: At least 90%

Include Rising Talent: Yes

Activity on this job Proposals: 20 to 50

Direct applications and inquiries to Careers@GroPod.io.

Company Biography

Heliponix, LLC provides consumers with the GroPod© Smart Garden Appliance, a fully-automated, modular vertical farm that consumers can use in their households. It uniquely uses the Rotary Aeroponic™ technology to achieve higher yields with less power consumption and the least amount of user maintenance to achieve the highest degree of food safety. By placing the point of produce production at the point of consumption, the entire wasteful supply chain of produce can be eliminated in favor of localized production.

The business model could be described as “Keurig for food” as users subscribe to monthly recurring shipments of G-Pods™, seed cartridges which are placed inside of the system, and harvested on a regular basis. Not only is the GroPod leading an era of environmental sustainability, but it is establishing a new precedent of quality for produce for consumers that is free of pesticides, or other undesirable compounds that could adversely affect consumer health.

FUNDING PHASE

Seed