Memphis firm aims for $10 billion in sales, names lead exec
Fast-growing Indigo Ag Inc. is moving Rachel Raymond to Memphis to head North American operations for the seed technology firm.
Raymond will be the top executive in Memphis for the ambitious Boston tech startup.
Indigo strategy calls for annual sales to surpass $10 billion along with a public stock offering by 2021 to repay investors who have bankrolled the firm with more than $650 million in venture capital.
“Agriculture is one of the largest industries in the world,” Indigo chief executive David Perry said, adding that “despite that, agriculture lags other industries in the adoption of new technology. If we can solve that we have the opportunity to build a really big company.”
Indigo coats seeds with living microbes intended to help cotton, wheat, corn, soybean, and rice plants ward off pests, tolerate drought and achieve similar results. Because the Indigo seeds can reduce the need for pesticides and fertilizer, the company has geared up projections for sales worldwide to soar beyond the $10 billion-level, Perry said.
“That’s more than a hope — it’s a plan,’’ said Perry, who has co-founded and sold several companies including Anacor Pharmaceuticals.
Raymond, a 2008 University of Minnesota graduate currently winding up maternity leave, will take responsibility for a business poised to become the city’s largest agriculture technology company. Her duties will include overseeing sales, marketing and customer service.
Indigo officials figure employment worldwide will triple to more than 1,000 workers in several years. In an interview Monday, Perry declined to forecast the eventual size of the Memphis workforce. The firm currently employs 170 in the city, he said, up from 130 workers in October.
Indigo offices are located in Toyota Plaza, a Downtown building near The Peabody hotel. Indigo on Wednesday will disclose more expansion plans, Perry said.
Raymond, who received a masters’ degree in business from Harvard University in 2012, earlier crossed career paths with Robert Berendes, Indigo’s chairman of the board of directors.
Raymond was based in Switzerland from 2010 through 2012 as a business planner and global strategist for Syngenta AG, a 28,000-employee Swiss ag tech company with annual sales of about $12.5 billion. She moved to Washington as Syngenta’s lead executive on corporate affairs for two years and in 2015 joined Indigo as senior business planner.
Berendes had headed Syngenta’s research and development activities from Switzerland into 2014. He went on to become a partner in Flagship Pioneering. The Boston venture capital firm is the key financial backer of Indigo, which started in 2015.