Charlestown is the historically blue-collar Boston neighborhood best known as a setting for such films as The Town and Good Will Hunting. Not exactly the sort of place you’d expect to find the city’s next hotshot startup, let alone one promising to significantly increase the crop yields of agricultural staples like wheat and cotton.
And yet, there is Indigo Agriculture, which has converted part of an old Charlestown milk bottling plant into a headquarters that melds open office decor with top-end lab equipment and “grow rooms” whose LED lights are so bright that visitors must wear sunglasses.
Indigo is led by president and CEO David Perry, a serial entrepreneur who previously co-founded and led Anacor Pharmaceuticals (acquired earlier this year by Pfizer for $5.2 billion). After leaving Anacor in March 2014, Perry began to turn his attention to food. It was something he’d given a lot of attention to in his personal life, due to a family history of heart disease, and he determined that there were three big food issues facing the world:
1. How to produce more food.
2. How to make that food healthier and more sustainable.
3. How to change eating behaviors.
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