Thread by @Mylovanov

Good evening. Day 282 of the war. I am in Vinnitsa, Ukraine. This is an unmanned tractor. Local engineers developed it so it can de-mine agricultural fields without putting driver’s life at risk. We came to check it out and see how KSE Business School can help scale them up 1/

This is a large mine sensor that will be attached to the tractor. A team of engineers has worked in their spare time, during the breaks at their regular job, to develop a prototype. It uses a cheap tractor available at every village; it can be easily replaced if explodes. 2/

The tractor employs autopilot systems used in fancy agricultural equipment to control wheel angles. The engineers adapted it for this tractor and also added distance controller transmission, throttle, etc. They have assembled it from the spare parts they had. Pretty ingenious 3/

Now, they are looking for investment to create an MVP. They work at a high agro tech company Frendt. Here are pics of their director and faculties. They fix high tech equipment for farmers. During the war, I guess, the demand has dropped, but their company appears healthy 4/

They say they don’t want to wait until the end of the war for large scale demining. Instead, they have decided to find a solution that is cheap, effective, and scalable. Of course, in the middle of our conversation, electricity goes off. They have a cascade backup system that 5/

their employees can finish working on heat and electricity sensitive projects (e.g. repairing complex electronic systems). We cut the visit short b/c their Wi-Fi is weak and I have to find a place to connect for CNN interview. We did it at a gas station off the back of our car 6/

We visited a local university too to see how students cope with blackouts. Unlike at KSE, classes were online. Instead of students, we found entrepreneurs. Here are the pics of professors and PhD students creating stoves off empty gas cans. The most need input? Gas canisters! 7/ twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

We also found an entrepreneur who creates buggies off totaled Audis. They import them from Poland and take them apart to get the engine. The rest they manufacture themselves 8/

It takes a week or two to make one buggy, but they can do 3-5 a month. The ingredients have been getting 20-40% more expensive. After the Russians destroyed the metallurgy industry in the East, specifically, in Mariupol, they now have to buy metal pipes from China. 9/

They are trying to digitalization and automatics their production and have made quite a bit of progress, limiting manual labor to assembly. Here is my selfie with the owner / entrepreneur and a video of me driving one of the buggies 10/ twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

The faculty and the rector of the university say that the students and entrepreneurs around the university have been very active. In the beginning of the war, they started by assembling Molotov cocktails, then produced traps for tanks, then telephones and comms for trenches, 11/

then a “panic button/device” that can help find you under the ruins of a building after a missile attack. We agreed to establish some joint projects between our and their students and entrepreneurs. If you want to support our students (and likely theirs too), you can donate 12/12