Using AI to Help the Poultry Industry in Manila

Iamus is a designer and manufacturer of AI-enabled agricultural robots that assist poultry farmers in carrying out manual tasks and facility maintenance traditionally performed by human labor. These tasks are crucial to poultry yield, margins, and animal health, yet are currently done inefficiently and would be greatly improved with the use of robotics. With Iamus, human labor can be assigned to more directed and higher complexity actions. Iamus has an Irish team and is headquartered in Manila, Philippines.

Iamus had raised about £500,000 in seed funding from strategic investors but was preparing to pitch to non-strategic investors and needed our help on messaging it to investors that were not necessarily familiar with the industry. They had found that they had difficulty communicating the business value of the company. They also wanted us to perform a competition and market analysis and model future growth. As consultants, we were able to look at the business problem and company from an outsider’s perspective and help Iamus craft a message for potential investors. The additional analysis and modeling we performed was included in the new pitch deck as well.

The quality of assignment felt like a real consulting firm could have been brought in to do the exact same work. That, combined with the cutting edge nature of the company and an interesting emerging market like the Philippines, made this one of the most rewarding experiences I had during my first year at Columbia Business School. I also had the professional development opportunity to lead a team of two teammates during the engagement and spend quality time with them in Manila (I did not know them especially well going in). For those without a consulting background, Pangea can truly mimic the experience — the energy around delivering excellent deliverables to the client on a tight schedule, the intellectual freedom to develop the analyses as you see fit, and the reward of knowing that your work has made an impact.

– David Wu ’20