Nigerian Agritech Platform, FarmCrowdy Raises $1M to Boost Growth
Farmcrowdy, Nigeria’s first digital agriculture platform, has raised $1m (one million dollars) in a round of funding from investors including Techstars, Cox Ventures and Social Capital.
Famcrowdy connects investors to farmers through sponsorship packages to fund higher yields for a share of the returns. Recall that the startup recently announced the launch of its first Agritech mobile app for Android, iOS and Windows devices.
FarmCrowdy raises $1M round to bring Nigerian farmers online and to market https://t.co/2TmHyZt37d # via @techcrunch. Super happy about our last 12 months since we launched. Well done team
— Onyeka Akumah (@onyekaakumah) December 18, 2017
According to Onyeka Akumah, co-founder and CEO of Farmcrowdy, with another 6,000 Farm Followers visiting its website weekly. It launched its mobile app some weeks ago in order to provide a more accessible platform for agriculture enthusiasts to experience, learn and appreciate agriculture practice first-hand. Now, Farm Sponsors can expect to see returns after harvest of 6-25% over a 3-9 month period, depending on what farm type they choose.
Farmcrowdy currently provides regular updates, images and videos from the farmers as they work on the sponsored farms, providing an opportunity for their sponsors and farm followers to digitally track the journey of their sponsored farm through regular updates. It has worked with close to 2,000 small-scale farmers in Nigeria already with a vast majority of Farmcrowdy sponsors based in Nigeria and 10% located in the US and UK.
It was a huge honour representing @farmcrowdy at the 2017 Business For Africa Summit in Egypt and selected as one of the top 20 Young Entrepreneurs to watch in Africa at the YED event. Also met the Deputy Director, @nipcng Mr Shettima Barma pic.twitter.com/CzUrsNBmbq
— Onyeka Akumah (@onyekaakumah) December 10, 2017
Recall that it was selected by Techstars Atlanta as one of the members of the 2017 Class and the only African Startup to participate in its accelerator program. Farmcrowdy is reshaping the way in which people participate in farming and food production, through using their online platform to source funds from sponsors, whose money is used to secure land, plant crops and meet the funding needs of boosting food production with small-scale farmers.
Since the launch of its website over 12 months ago, Farmcrowdy has recorded close to 1,000 unique farm sponsors, aggregated a combined 4,000 acres of farmland in Nigeria for farming purpose and grown over 150,000 organic chickens to date. FarmCrowdy currently operates in eight states across Nigeria.
