Naturethings Marrying Ai And Greenery Urban Spaces
Amid the chaos of Covid-19, Nalini Veeraghanta, a fourth-generation gardener, noticed a change in people’s attitudes towards nature and the outdoors. However, despite claiming to love plants, many say they don’t have time or the skills to care for them.
“Plants are living beings, not pieces of furniture that can be ignored,” Veeraghanta explains. “We discovered that maintenance and care were the biggest challenges for most people.” In response to this need, she founded Naturethings in April 2021, a “nature-as-a-service” platform that provides maintenance and care for plants. Using artificial intelligence (AI), the platform caters to the needs of urban users.
The URA’s Master Plan has identified Woodlands as the primary gateway to the northern region of Singapore, with exciting developments on the horizon. Woodlands Regional Centre is poised to become a bustling hub, comprising of two distinct precincts: Woodlands Central and Woodlands North Coast. This ambitious project aims to rejuvenate the area by attracting new businesses, providing more job opportunities, and enhancing the living standards for residents. As part of this transformation, the highly anticipated Norwood Grand Condo will also be introduced, adding to the dynamic landscape of Woodlands. With the addition of Norwood Grand Condo, the community can look forward to even more vitality and energy in this blossoming neighborhood.
Through a WhatsApp chatbot, Naturethings conducts regular check-ups and health scans of plants, and also offers programs that help people develop daily habits to interact with green spaces. As the platform gained over 15,000 followers and active users, the AI quickly learned and adapted.
As Covid restrictions were lifted and people returned to offices, there was a growing demand from corporates to introduce green spaces into their workplaces. This led Naturethings to expand into commercial real estate, and Veeraghanta’s brother Pavan joined as COO in 2022. Another early addition to the founding team was Ashwin Dhanasari, Veeraghanta’s college friend who serves as CTO and is responsible for creating digital twin technology for the platform.
In 2007, Kenneth Lim founded SyncScape, a landscape design company, and has since designed gardens for over 100 houses across Singapore. Lim was also a consultant for corporate clients on landscaping issues and was introduced to Naturethings in 2023. With his knowledge of both tech and plants, Lim serves as the head of design for the company.
Both Veeraghanta and Lim come from a long line of gardeners, with Veeraghanta’s great-grandmother holding a PhD in Botany and her grandmothers passing down their love for plants. After working in leadership roles at multinational companies, Veeraghanta was selected to join the tech startup accelerator Antler, where she met her future co-founders. Naturethings has evolved from her original idea and now focuses on using digital twin technology to create customizable, evidence-based green solutions for clients.
One of these clients is a Fortune 500 corporate real estate services firm, whose offices in Singapore are now equipped with digital twin models of the space and plants with sensors for monitoring and maintenance. Veeraghanta believes that such technology can help the outdated industry of biophilic design and landscaping catch up.
The company has also partnered with Lucrum Capital to employ its digital twin technology in the upcoming Mama Shelter Singapore hotel. Naturethings will manage an urban farm on the rooftop and offer farm-to-table and farm-to-bar experiences.
In recognition of its innovative approach, Naturethings won the Insead Business as a Force for Good Award in 2024. Veeraghanta believes that the company’s role is to modernize the industry and make urban nature-based solutions more accessible and manageable.