Welcome to Episode 85 of the Asian Hustle Network Podcast! We are very excited to have Hiroki Koga on this week's episode.
We interview Asian entrepreneurs around the world to amplify their voices and empower Asians to pursue their dreams and goals. We believe that each person has a message and a unique story from their entrepreneurial journey that they can share with all of us.
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The U.S. agriculture industry is constantly evolving as technological innovations continue to change the way we cultivate food, and shift consumers’ attitudes on the importance of eating fresh and organic produce. Recently, indoor vertical farming has further proven its potential to support communities with hyper-locally grown produce while being rich in nutrients and taste.
The first thing Hiroki Koga instantly noticed when he moved to the United States from Japan – where fruit such as strawberries are a delicacy – is that produce in the U.S. is less flavorful than what he was accustomed to growing up in Japan since the U.S. agriculture industry prioritizes yield and shelf life over taste and nutrition.
Since then, Hiroki has made it his mission to bring the finest Japanese strawberries to the U.S. consumer market and founded Oishii – the company behind the world’s largest indoor vertical strawberry farm and the Omakase Berry – in 2016 while he was pursuing his MBA at the University of California, Berkeley.
With Hiroki’s leadership and knowledge of ancient Japanese farming techniques, Oishii is the only player in the industry to produce pollinated fruit using AI and machine learning technologies at a commercial scale – considered the most sophisticated crops to grow indoors because of long cultivation cycles – while using zero pesticides to produce perfectly ripe, delicious strawberries year-round for consumers.
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