Innovative, modern solutions for efficient farmers

About Synnefa

We are a team of passionate minds working together to create lasting solutions to challenges faced by farmers.

Synnefa is a greek word meaning cloud. The importance of the cloud to farmers is as profound as it is to technology developers. Farmers cannot grow crops without clouds which provide rain. Similarly, technology developers cannot build powerful web applications and platforms without the Cloud infrastructure to host and run their programs.

The cloud is what unifies us and our farmers whom we work with every day to grow food for us.

Working together with farmers

Our company slogan is making complex farming feel simple! because that’s what we do every day. We push ourselves to create solutions that will make complex farming feel simple. Growing food deserves to be easy when using modern farming solutions.

We do this by partnering with farmers to provide them with affordable modern farming solutions to increase efficiency and improve production. We want farmers to do what they love most-farming! and leave all the heavy lifting to us!

Our agriculture philosophy

We learn from farmers. Farmers are our primary source of inspiration to look for better solutions and innovate. We stay to see them grow and succeed after taking up our solutions. We don’t leave. It’s just the beginning of our relationship.We leverage existing partnerships. We know how hard it is to build a trusting relationship, so we will always first leverage one’s existing network of partners before proposing new ones.Synnefa is the registered owner of Illuminum Greenhouses™ Trademark.

The Synnefa journey started with a dream

Jan 2013

We hatched! Founded by 2 broke friends on campus.

Jan 2014

Incorporated and began building with Arduino boards in the hostels.

August 2014

The first prototype built and deployed at the foot of Mt.Kilimanjaro. Crushed within 7 days!

Dec 2015

Hired our first employee and reached 100 farms.

Feb 2015

Used Raspberry pi and worked amazing signed up 50 pre-orders.

November 2014

iHub loves our work! offers us office space and incubation. Finally moved out of our hostels! Yeeiii.

June 2016

President Obama comes to Kenya and loves our pitch, invites us to the US and offers us partnership and our first funding $15000 from AAAS

Jan 2017

V3 comes out better and smarter with solar power, everything we ever wanted. hired our employee #10

March 2018

Rapid testing and reiterations of V3. then backed by USADF, ASME SPRING $110 000 for further development

Jan 2020

Innovate UK joins our cause and backs us with $856 000 to build v4 powered by AI

Aug 2019

Reached farmer 1000 and rebranded from a pure tech company to a farming partner

July 2018

Bagged BRCK to develop V3 on their new picoBRCK, our first angel investor says yes to back us

Sept 2021

We secured our pre-seed round lead by Founders Factory Africa and Water and Energy for Food. Rebranded from Illuminum Greenhouses to Synnefa

Meet the Synnefa Team

Taita Ngetich
CEO
Peter Gichuhi
CTO
Nessa Maina
Senior Maintenance Engineer
Janet Machuka
Social Media and Content Manager
Sarah Owuor
Customer Support
Timothy Lubanga
Senior Backend Developer
Daniel Karisa
Junior Accountant
Njoki Mungai
Office Assistant
Catherine Gathoni
Junior QA Engineer