Farmcrowdy, a Lagos, Nigeria-based digital agriculture platform, secured $1m in seed funding.
Backers included Cox Enterprises, Techstars Ventures, Social Capital, Hallett Capital and Right-Side Capital, as well as angel investors Tyler Scriven, Michael Cohn, Josephine Group, FC Agro Allied SPV and Dr. Christof Walter.
The company intends to use the funds to scale its operations with plans to expand into a combined 20 states in Nigeria, work with 4,000 additional small-scale farmers and engage a combined 20,000 new farm followers and farm sponsors.
Founded by Onyeka Akumah, Farmcrowdy provides a digital agriculture platform which allows Nigerians to venture in and sponsor agriculture. The platform connects small scale farmers with sponsors, who invest in farm cycles. A farm cycle can be anything from poultry [3-5 months] to cassava [9 months]. The farmers receive on-the-ground advice from Farmcrowdy’s Technical Field Specialists who also give them training in agriculture practices and provide them with quality farm input. Prior to harvest, Farmcrowdy works with pre-arranged buyers who assist the farmers sell their yield at harvest and earn a decent margin.
The sponsor then gets their original sponsorship +40% of the profit from the harvest, the farmer receives 40% of the profit and Farmcrowdy receives 20% of the profit.
The company recently launched their first mobile app which provides an accessible platform for agriculture enthusiasts to experience, learn, do their farming business with real farmers and monitor agriculture practice first-hand through regular updates, images and videos from the farms. There is the opportunity for sponsors and farm followers to digitally track the progress of their sponsored farms from their mobile devices.
Farmcrowdy has to-date recorded close to 1,000 unique farm sponsors from Nigerians in Nigeria, the US and UK. The company has aggregated a combined 4,000 acres of farmland across 8 states in Nigeria and worked with more than 2,000 small scale farmers.
FinSMEs
19/12/2017