By Gabriel Johnson
Farmcrowdy Limited, Nigeria’s first and leading Agritech company founded in 2016 by 5 young Nigerians led by Onyeka Akumah, with the aim of empowering farmers by connecting them to alternative financing and market access via a crowdfunding platform has today announced that it will extend its service in agriculture beyond financing into using technology to boost the food value chain as well as the launch of a new E-commerce platform and its trading and aggregation platform for smallholder farmers.
Farm Crowdy began with two farmers in 2016 and developing to 300,000 farmers in 2020 across eight states. in that light, expresses it’s intentions to grow the numbers of farmers it would have worked with by 2021 to 500,000.
Nigerian agritech startup, Farmcrowdy has in its 4th year, dispatched a sum of 6new business units to primarily employ the use of tech to deliver value to both farmers and consumers. These units are an expression of the ambition of the company and its plans to strengthen and expand its offering to cater to as much needs as it possibly could.
Highlighting its victories as of recently, Onyeka Akumah, the organization’s CEO narrated how extensively the organisation has expanded overtime.
“Since inception in November 2016, Farmcrowdy has amassed a network of over 300,000 farmers in its network, cultivated across 17,000 acres of farmland, reared 3 million broiler birds and deployed funds for farming projects across Nigeria.” He said.
“This finished in developing 5,000 sections of land of maize in Kaduna, 2,000 sections of land of rice in Kwara and 1,250 sections of land of cassava in Akwa Ibom just as over 1.2 million chickens and it has from that point forward, kept on taking goliath and imaginative steps.” He added.
The award winning startup has also hinted on a possible expansion to replicate it’s model in two countries in 2021.
In addition, Akumah, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the agritech company, revealed that Farmcrowdy has over the years increased farmers’ incomes by 80 percent, partnered with various organizations, and generated over $1.9 million in sponsorships. He also said the company is currently working with over 3,000 small scale farmers across different states in the country.
“We are committed to expanding our reach in order to continue to empower local farmers, positively impact their lives and their families while boosting food production and sustainability in Nigeria,” he said.
Going forward, the organisation has pledged it’s focus on the use of technology to build tools and resources that farmers will need to boost food security in the country through 6 business focus.
In commemoration of its fourth year anniversary, Farmcrowdy whas announced the launch of these businesses along with the introduction of two major platforms, the Farmcrowdy Foods E-Commerce platform and the Farmcrowdy Trader platform (Flagship platform under Farmcrowdy Aggregation).
Recognizing the two major platforms
Farmcrowdy Foods is a one-stop E-commerce platform for fresh food and groceries. It was created in the heat of the COVID -19 pandemic as a solution to the growing food scarcity by giving individuals the opportunities to purchase food items that are fresh, healthy, and fit for consumption conveniently from the comfort of their homes. Since inception in April 2020, Farmcrowdy foods has been able to successfully complete over 3,000 orders in it’s first 90 days, through the Farmcrowdy Foods mobile app available on the Google and IOS app store and now, Farmcrowdy Foods is set to launch its E-commerce platform where consumers can purchase all their fresh foods and get value for their monies.
The Farmcrowdy Trader platform is a one-stop-shop created to provide major processors and international buyers the opportunity to purchase commodities directly from farming clusters and aggregators by optimizing the market access to African farmers and improving their income and boosting their yields. The platform creates an atmosphere for greater integration of the value chain through vertical relationships which improves product flow. thereby reducing cost, inconveniences, and improving efficiencies through technology. Farmcrowdy Trader has a mobile application that enables easy farmer’s data profiling, advisory services, procurement, agency banking, insurance, and microcredit for small-holder farmers.
“Each of these businesses under Farmcrowdy 3.0 is revenue generators on their own with each having its own managerial officers and digitalized projects like the aggregation and foods division have the Farmcrowdy trader platform and the Farmcrowdy foods platform respectively,” Akumah added.