Digital Agriculture & Frontier Markets -9 May
New funding announcements: Mayani in the Philippines, Farm to Feed in Kenya, Elevarm in Indonesia and BharatRohan in India
30/04/24
Mayani secures funding, partners with Ninjacart in the Philippines
Agritech start-up Mayani, a digital B2B marketplace linking farmers and fisherfolk in the Philippines with buyers, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Ninja Ventures, the VC arm of Indian agritech Ninjacart. Besides providing capital, Ninjacart will offer supply chain support and advisory services to support Mayani’s growth and innovation. The Filipino agritech plans to leverage Ninjacart’s predictive modelling to intelligently match agri-supply with market demand. Established in 2019, Mayani claims to have a network of 144,000 farmers and fisherfolks. Its B2B customers include hotels and restaurants, food processors, and large supermarket chains. Mayani started with funding from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). In January 2023, the startup raised USD 1.7 million in a seed funding round led by AgFunder via its GROW Impact Fund. Other investors supporting Mayani are Plug and Play Ventures, Ocean Impact, and Atlas Ventures.
30/04/24
Kenya’s Farm to Feed gets equity investment to grow platform
Kenyan agritech Farm to Feed, a B2B platform which targets unused produce enhancing sustainability and farmer livelihoods, has received an equity investment from Ethiopia-based impact investor Renew Capital. The agritech plans to use the funding to build out its platform for tracking food loss and generating carbon credits. Farm to Feed states that it has salvaged nearly two million pounds of fresh produce from 800 farmers, supplementing their income by more than USD 200,000. Founded in 2020, Farm to Feed is a grantee of the second cohort of the GSMA Innovation Fund for Climate Resilience and Adaptation 2.0. It has also received an equity investment from pre-seed venture capital fund and accelerator Catalyst Fund.
02/05/24
Kenya’s iProcure enters administration
Kenyan agritech iProcure has gone into administration after failing to settle undisclosed debts. KPMG has been appointed as the administrator, and will deal with creditors with the objective to revive the company. Liquidation remains a prospect, should the debt situation become unsustainable. The company is the latest Kenyan startup to face financial difficulties due to challenging macroeconomics conditions and the recent so-called “funding freeze”. In 2022, agritech WeFarm had to terminate operations after raising approximately USD30 million.
Photo credit: iProcure
Established in 2013, iProcure is a provider of digital procurement solutions for agri value chains. It has a proprietary supply chain technology that supports business intelligence and data-driven stock management for agro dealers and enables efficient delivery of supplies to farmers. Farmers engaged by iProcure have seen yields increased up to 50%. The agritech has been widely supported by investors. It was backed by Safaricom’s Spark Fund since its early days. In 2022, it raised USD 10.2 million in a round led by impact investor Investisseurs & Partenaires (I&P) with Novastar Ventures and British International Investment (BII) also participating among others. In 2023, it received a USD 1.2 million grant from USAID. Just in May last year, iProcure announced expanding its operations in Tanzania in partnership with Farm to Market Alliance (FtMA). The agritech has reportedly raised a total of USD 17.2 million.
03/05/24
Uganda’s Inputi launches toll free line for farmers
Ugandan agritech Inputi, a market linkages platform for inputs, has launched a new toll-free line providing farmers with direct access to a team of agro-advisors, produce market experts, and support staff. Farmers will be able to access advice on crop management, market insights, and financial assistance. Founded in 2020, Inputi is a digital marketplace, aggregator and distributor of authentic crop and livestock inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides. It delivers inputs to a network of 1,000+ agro shops, dairy cooperatives, and meat cooperatives across Uganda. The company guarantees input delivery at regional hubs or directly to the end customer at a fixed transportation cost. In addition, the agritech supports farmers with agri advisory services, post-harvest handling and financial services. In April, the agritech raised an undisclosed amount of new funding from the United States International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) under the USADF-DFC African Small Business Catalyst Program (ASBC Program).
08/05/24
Indonesia’s Elevarm bags $2.6M in seed round
Indonesian B2B2C agritech Elevarm has raised USD 2.6 million in a seed funding round led by Southeast Asian VC firm Insigna Ventures Partners with participation from VC firm 500 Global, and Gibran Huzaifah, the CEO and Founder of Indonesia’s aquatech startup eFishery. The funding will go primarily toward scaling the agritech’s own production of seedlings and organic fertilisers in order to meet growing demand from smallholder farmers. Founded in 2022, Elevarm has a suite of products for farmers in horticulture, including the Elevarm app, a farming productivity app with financing, land monitoring and agri-knowledge features, and PasarAgri, a digital marketplace for farmers and wholesalers that sources produce from farming community centers. According to its website, Elevarm has 13,000 agribusiness partners and 5,000+ active farmers as customers.
Photo credit: Heaptlak, Elevarm
08/05/24
Indian agri drone company BharatRohan raises $2.3M
Indian agricultural drone company BharatRohan has raised USD 2.3 Million. Investors include Villgro Innovation Foundation, Caspian, RevX, and Venture Garage. The agritech plans to use the funding to develop proprietary edge computing drones for precise crop monitoring and pesticide application and to expand its offering to 15 Indian states. Edge computing is a decentralised approach to data processing that is especially suited to low-resource environments as it pushes analytics on end-user devices (e.g. smartphones, drones). Established in 2016, the agritech currently supports 50,000 farmers covering 2,00,000 acres in five states of India with its advanced Drone-based Decision Support System (DSS) known as CropAssure. In November last year, the company partnered with the UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) to provide drone services to smallholder farmers in the states of Telangana and Haryana.
Good reads: A selection of must-read reports
Good reads (1): WEF and PwC call for collaborative agritech approaches in emerging economies
The World Economic forum (WEF), in collaboration with PwC India has published a new report “Agritech: Shaping Agriculture in Emerging Economies, Today and Tomorrow”. The study argues that new technologies such as augmented reality, artificial intelligence for weather prediction, traceability, smart logistics solutions and the internet of things, could help the agriculture sector grow an additional 70% of food for 9.1 billion people by 2050. Quoting McKinsey, WEF and PwC however highlight that only 39% of farmers globally have adopted at least one transformative technology. This average is weighted by a 62% adoption rate among European farmers, while in Asia adoption is only 9%. Similarly, the report highlights how women farmers are at risk of being left out of the agritech revolution due to ingrained socioeconomic challenges such as limited land-holding rights, even though women make up 43% of the global agricultural workforce. To address these challenges, the authors call for a collaborative effort by governments, the private sector – including start-ups and investors – academia, and civil society.
Good reads (2): AgFunder presents key trends in India’s agrifoodtech investment in 2023
VC firm AgFunder and Indian agrifoodtech investor Omnivore have published the 2024 India AgriFoodTech Investment Report. The study finds that in 2023 Indian agrifoodtech startups raised USD 940 million, down 60% from the USD 2.4 billion raised in 2022. The number of deals remained almost flat with 129 closing in 2023 compared to 133 deals in 2022, indicating smaller deal sizes given the significant decline in dollars raised. Among the different agrifoodtech categories included in the report, the upstream category of “agribusiness marketplaces and fintech” was the second best funded category, raising USD 162 million. This category includes digital solutions directly targeting the country’s 150 million-strong smallholder farmer population. Notable raises in this category include the USD 46 million (Series C) raised by agri e-commerce startup Vegrow in December 2023, and the USD 62.5 million (Series B) raised by farm analytics and agri advisory company Leads Connect in September 2023.
Good reads (3): Caribou Digital explores transformative role of “social agriculture”
Research and advisory firm Caribou Digital has released The Platform Livelihoods Project, a collection of studies on digital marketplaces, some conducted in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation and others with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. One of these studies looks at how farmers are using social agriculture, specifically in Nigeria and Ghana. Social agriculture is defined as the use social media to support agricultural livelihoods.
The study highlights how platforms like Facebook, X, and WhatsApp are being used by farmers to enhance agricultural productivity and profitability. The report finds that social media has been pivotal in promoting economic growth and inclusivity in agriculture, fostering gender equality and engaging the youth. For Nigeria, the report looks at farmers in the cassava, snail, and broccoli value chains. It finds that social agriculture has empowered individuals working in agriculture by providing vital information on market prices, innovative farming techniques, and direct consumer access. For Ghana, the report looks at farmers in the cocoa, rice, soybean, and vegetables value chains. It finds that farmers experience the same benefits as in Nigeria, with added emphasis on community building and knowledge sharing, which have significantly increased their competitiveness in the market.