AgXelerators President & CEO Mark Zettler on the creation of Indiana’s new ag company

By C.J. Miller

There’s a brand-new ag company based out of Indiana called AgXelerators which plans to develop new chemical and biological products through ag-based scientific research.

Mark Zettler is the President, CEO, and co-founder of AgXelerators. With more than 30 years of experience working for some of the top companies in the ag industry, he tells Hoosier Ag Today how he started his company.

Mark Zettler, President, CEO, and co-founder of Indiana’s new ag company AgXelerators. Photo courtesy of AgXelerators.

″For the last four years, I’ve been consulting with startup companies in the ag space, both on the biologic side and on the chemical side,″ says Zettler. ″There’s a common denominator amongst most of the startups that I’ve been dealing with and that is transforming their discoveries—these new active ingredients for biostimulants or biofertilizers—into commercially-viable formulated products. So, there’s a big hurdle between showing activity in the laboratory environment and demonstrating activity in the field, and then going from there and commercializing.″

That’s where he says AgXelerators steps in.

″Running into this common denominator for a few years, I’d start talking to colleagues that I worked with it at Dow Agrisciences (now Corteva Agrisciences) and said, ‘You know what, guys? I think if we formed a company, we could probably get this off the ground and really help a lot of startups.’ So, there are several of us that went together and said, ‘Let’s do this,’ and we started AgXelerators in May,″ according to Zettler.

He says the company will help expedite the process of taking the proven research from the lab and making it commercially available to growers. He adds that AgXelerators will work to make sure that the process for everyone involved is as easy as possible.

″We know how important it is to get [the product] into a grower’s hands and have it be easy to use, simple, and cost-effective,″ says Zettler. ″Anything that we touch, we’re thinking about that already. So, I’m hoping that growers will appreciate that when they see AgXelerators is involved, they know the product is going to be easy to use and it’s going to work like they want it to work.″

AgXelerators is setting up their first laboratory and research facility at the Purdue Technology Center (PTC). Zettler says Indiana was the best location for starting the new company.

″Purdue University is one of the very top ag schools in the country,″ he says. ″Being able to locate AgXelerators near their campus and tap into all the different resources that they have available there for us—it’s just an incredible opportunity.″

Zettler says the company already has big plans for the future.

″We’re looking at how AgXelerators can create our own product line and our own products that would go into crop protection agents or biostimulant agents,″ says Zettler. ″So, we’re also looking at it from that angle too. Not just from a service model, but also creating new formulated products—we want to be able to develop those products on our own as well.″

Zettler says that the company has already hired two scientists and are currently wanting to hire a third scientist for their laboratory at the Purdue Technology Center. He adds that AgXelerators is already looking at opening additional research facilities and offices in other locations beyond West Lafayette, Indiana.