PlanetWatchers

PlanetWatchers operates as a geospatial analytics firm, providing data-driven solutions primarily to the North American crop insurance industry. Founded in 2016 by Roi Shilo, Ariel Smoliar, and Shay Lev, the company leverages advanced technology to transform traditional, manual crop assessment into an automated, efficient process. The founding team, including former members of elite Israeli military intelligence units, identified the commercial potential of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) for monitoring natural resources. Shilo, the CTO, brings over two decades of experience in remote sensing and satellite data applications, having held management positions where he developed new remote sensing applications for various markets. CEO Dominic Edmunds, an experienced entrepreneur from the big data sector, joined the team to steer the company's focus toward the crop insurance market, a challenge he embraced for its complexity.

The company's core business revolves around its Analytics-as-a-Service (AaaS) platform, which serves crop insurance providers by automating policy data capture and claim validation. PlanetWatchers generates revenue by offering subscription-based access to its services, which help clients save significant time and resources. By utilizing its technology, the company reports it can reduce the time spent processing a claim by 40-75%. Its clientele includes a substantial portion of the crop insurance market, with their customer base reportedly underwriting 45% of U.S. insured acres as of December 2022, and partnerships with entities like ProAg, the World Bank, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The service is built upon a proprietary platform that combines multi-source satellite sensors, particularly SAR, with machine learning algorithms. SAR technology is a key differentiator, as it allows for the collection of detailed crop data regardless of weather conditions like cloud cover or poor lighting. The platform analyzes time-series data to provide actionable insights for insurers, such as verifying planting dates, confirming acreage, classifying crop types, and assessing damage from weather events like wind and floods. This remote analysis eliminates the need for frequent in-person field visits, making the process of underwriting policies and validating claims faster and more objective. The company has steadily expanded its offerings, launching services for acreage reporting, storm damage analysis, prevented planting detection, and harvest detection between 2020 and 2023.

Keywords: geospatial analytics, crop insurance, insurtech, agritech, remote sensing, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), machine learning, data analytics, claims validation, acreage reporting, agricultural monitoring, satellite imagery, natural resource management, risk assessment, food security, precision agriculture, claims processing, policy automation, environmental monitoring, big data