Summer with Skandy Blog Series: VertiGreens

About Summer with Skandy

This blog is part of the Summer with Skandy series, highlighting the experiences of participants in the Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s summer programs at Washington University in St. Louis.

Throughout the summer, Launchpad founders, Launchpad interns, and Skandalaris Internship Program (SkIP) participants work alongside startups, innovators, and entrepreneurs across the St. Louis region while engaging in professional development, networking, and entrepreneurial programming through the Skandalaris Center.

The Summer with Skandy series offers a firsthand look at the ventures, organizations, and experiences shaping the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurial leaders.

Growing Food Without Soil, Weather, or Middlemen

Author: Siddarth Rajarajan

Picture a version of Earth where growing food reliably has become the hard part, not because we’ve run out of land, but because the climate itself has turned unpredictable. It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. That’s the problem VertiGreens is built to solve: chemical-free, high-quality produce, grown year-round, regardless of what’s happening outside.

About VertiGreens

VertiGreens uses Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) to grow produce indoors, away from the instability of open-field farming.

The mechanics are simpler than they sound. Plants need three things to photosynthesize: light, CO2 and nutrients. Full-spectrum white light replaces the sun. CO2 comes from the ambient air. And nutrients are delivered through a Nutrient Film Technique (NFT) system, a hydroponic setup where plants sit in slots and are fed nutrient-rich water directly to their roots, with no soil required.

The company currently grows more than 10 varieties of greens, with room to expand the portfolio further. It’s been operating for close to 42 months—long enough to move past the early experimentation phase and start signing on real clients. The mission driving all of it is straightforward: cut out the middlemen, and make chemical-free, quality produce affordable—not a premium product reserved for people who can pay extra for it.

My Role This Summer

I came in to build the MVP of an in-house software platform—one that would double as a data storage system and a live operations dashboard.

The idea was to use the data collected from ongoing grow cycles to draw correlations and refine the “recipe”—light, nutrients and timing—for each crop. The dashboard would give the team a real-time view of what’s currently in plantation, the cost and revenue impact of decisions, and how changing conditions might affect projected growth.

Alongside that, I worked on a handful of smaller projects directly for the founder—the kind of scattered, high-trust work you get handed at an early-stage company.

The biggest skill stretch was learning to work with AI tools and prompting without over-relying on them. I came in with zero agriculture background, and figuring out how to make an AI-assisted tool useful—without letting it hallucinate its way past the gaps in our data—took real discipline.

Reflecting on Siddarth’s contributions this summer, VertiGreens founder Tova Feinberg shared, “From day one, Siddarth was all in; eager to learn, quick to tackle problems, and always curious.” That mindset helped him navigate unfamiliar challenges while contributing meaningful work to an early-stage company.

What I Learned

Working with ambiguity is a skill, not a fallback.

No domain expertise, no clean historical data, and a founder who needed something usable fast—that combination forces you to build carefully and stay honest about what the tool knows versus what it’s guessing.

Entrepreneurship looks like patience before it looks like anything else.

My founder has spent 42 months laying groundwork—like bamboo, which spends years building root structure underground before it shoots up all at once. She’s just now at the point where real deals are lining up, and it’s clear that’s not luck—it’s the compounding of quiet, unglamorous consistency. Her schedule alone would break most people; her energy for it is what makes it sustainable.

Respect for farmers—and for nature—multiplied.

I grew up in southern India, where I’ve seen firsthand how hard farmers work and how much uncertainty they absorb. Learning the science behind CEA—how much must go right for a plant to simply grow—made that respect deeper, not smaller. Photosynthesis is something we take completely for granted, and it’s an absurdly complicated process.

Why It Matters

Affordable food shouldn’t come at the cost of quality.

Someone’s spending power shouldn’t determine whether the produce they eat is clean, fresh and good for them. That’s the gap VertiGreens is trying to close—and being close enough to see that mission taking shape, deal by deal, made it real in a way a pitch deck never could.

Closing Thoughts

I aspire to enter the world of management consulting, and if this summer taught me anything directly useful for that path, it’s this: ambiguity isn’t a problem to eliminate—it’s the actual job.

Beyond the resume line, I’m just glad to have spent a summer inside something trying to make good food a right, not a privilege.

About The Skandalaris Center

The Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Washington University in St. Louis empowers students, faculty, researchers and alumni to explore innovation, launch ventures and create meaningful impact. Through experiential learning, startup programs, mentorship, funding opportunities and a vibrant network of entrepreneurs and industry leaders, the Skandalaris Center helps transform ideas into action and prepares the next generation of innovators to solve complex challenges and build thriving ventures.