Granular, a farm management software company, has expanded its operations to the Midwest from California, opening a regional headquarters in the University of Illinois Research Park.
This new location will fuel the growth of Granular’s customer success, data science and engineering teams, the company announced. Additionally, it will serve as a live training center for customers, and will allow Granular to work closely with farmers as they look to boost profitability across their operations.
“Granular has been very active in the U of I community, and by opening an office in the middle of our campus, it further affirms Granular’s dedication to our school, our community and the ag industry,” said Bruce Sherrick, professor of farmland economics and member of the Granular Advisory Board. “Granular’s forward-thinking team, which is dedicated to bringing solutions to help farmers increase productivity and profitability, combined with the university and other academic ag experts, has incredible potential.”
Granular expects to continue strengthening its ties with the university to better understand farmers’ workflows and the business decisions they are making using Granular.
“We have had great success hiring young men and women who grew up on farms and have studied agricultural economics or engineering at a top university,” said Sid Gorham, Granular co-founder and CEO. “Champaign-Urbana was an obvious choice for our second office given our collaboration with the university’s economics faculty, the strength of the ACES program, and the geographic dispersion of our customer base.”
“Granular’s decision to expand here reflects the growth of agricultural technology as a cluster in Research Park, which leverages the knowledge of our faculty,” said Robert J. Hauser, dean of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Granular’s presence in Champaign will open new opportunities for students at our college, giving them tools that will augment what they are learning in the classroom.”