Farmcrowdy, one of Nigeria’s foremost agricultural platforms, just received $1 million seed funding from investors that included Techstars, Ajayi Solutions, Cox Ventures and Social Capital. This additional seed investment will enable Farmcrowdy scale operations, expand into 20 Nigerian states, and bring more small scale farmers and sponsors into its program.
It also announced the launch of the Farmcrowdy Group, which will support the startup’s mandate of building agritech solutions that enable the achievement of global food security in Africa. Farmcrowdy also announced that they are preparing for a Series A fundraise later this year.
This additional seed investment brings its total investment to $2 million, having previously raised $1 million from investor firms in 2017. Cody Simms, a Partner at Techstars said, “Techstars has been deeply impressed by Farmcrowdy’s mission to end poverty in Africa one farmer at a time since we first invested in the company in 2017 as part of Techstars Atlanta in partnership with Cox Enterprises. We are excited about the continued growth of the Farmcrowdy platform and thrilled to continue our support of the business with the most recent financing.”
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Formed in 2016, Farmcrowdy connects small scale farmers across Nigeria with access to finance sourced from individuals and corporates via its online platform, and has so far empowered over 12,000 farmers across 14 states.
It works with partners such as Syngenta and Africa’s International Institute of Tropical Agriculture. Onyeka Akumah, Founder and CEO of Farmcrowdy sees the revenue potential for agriculture in Nigeria “as massive”, noting the country’s size and growth, he says “Nigeria has 186 million people and is projected to become the world’s third largest country in the next 30 years. All of these people are going to need food to eat. We are delving into the possibility of utilizing drone services for field analysis, improving our farmers yield with additional research and 3D mapping, as well as entering into formidable strategic partnerships that will grow the impact of our work.”
In addition, the startup has launched the Farmcrowdy TFS App, available to its Technical Field Specialists, to better profile farmers and manage inventory, data collection and analysis from existing farmers. The app allows the sponsors to “Farm Shop” screened agricultural opportunities by produce type, funding amount, contract duration, and expected returns on investments. Investors can also use Farmcrowdy’s platform to track the performance of their sponsorships.