Kenyan Agri-Tech startup Farmers Pride raises $220k funding from Gray matters Capital through GMC coLABS.
Farmers Pride is an e-commerce platform that highlights village-level farmers to premium, inputs, services, and information through women-owned digital shops that run with technology.
The $220k will help up to 500,000 female rural farmers, to prop up their income and productivity with ingress to quality inputs and services.
Farmers Pride also connects farmers to whatever they require to succeed by utilizing technology and franchise.
This startup helps women-owned Agro-dealer shops, for the improvement of family income, food security, and a rise in farm production.
A farmer’s education program is in the works to reach 30,000 farmers by 2022, which will mostly involve women and youth.
This unique integration of Agro-dealer franchising and digital shop technology is a wonderful and innovative opportunity for female farmers and unemployed youths.
This being the latest investment by coLABS in the Agri-tech world of Kenya. CoLABS has invested in other startups: Trading platform Farm shine, B2B startup Taimba, Ghana’s Redbird, Tanzania’s women choice industries, Rwanda’s ARED, and Nigeria’s Sonocave. This form of corporate social responsibility is considered impeccable.
“By harnessing technology, Farmers Pride transforms the women-owned informal stores into micro-franchisees that can build traceability of the inputs and thus guarantee quality. In the process, they not only help build a community of micro-entrepreneurs with improved incomes but also shift gears for smallholder farmers by increasing the productivity of their yields.” -Sharda Vishwanathan, pipeline development lead at Gray Matters Capital coLABS.