Prominent Nigerian agritech startup, Farmcrowdy is celebrating its 2nd year in operation. Disrupting a major sector of the economy, Farmcrowdy since inception has gone on to show that the agriculture business could also be rewarding.
Breaking News:#Farmcrowdy is celebrating her 2 years anniversary plus launching #DigitalAgricultureDay yaaayyyy!!!!#FarmcrowdyAt2#DigitalAgricultureDay#NationalDigitalAgricultureDay#EmpoweringFarmersSince2016 pic.twitter.com/GpOmGDUj9K
— Farmcrowdy (@farmcrowdy) November 14, 2018
Founded in 2016 by Onyeka Akumah (C0-founder and CEO), the digital startup helps to solve a very important problem that has always plagued the agricultural sector of Nigeria – funding. This it does by connecting farmers to sponsors who fund their farming projects and has overtime empowered about 8,000 farmers across 10 states in Nigeria.
Farm sponsors can choose to sponsor a variety of farmers including cassava farmers, maize, rice, soya beans and poultry. Farm sponsorship starts from N96,000 [$270] with a 6-15% profit after farm cycle. The startup also boasts of over 2,500 unique farm sponsors from Nigerians in Nigeria, the US, Canada and the UK with over $2.3M investments by Nigerians in diaspora alone.
#FarmInMyPocket: The Farmcrowdy Mobile App is One Investment Tool You Should Have. #farmcrowdyapp #DigitalAgriculture #Nigeria @farmcrowdyhttps://t.co/XA7dNPycoA
— Technext (@technextdotng) June 6, 2018
Contributing to this young startups huge success is its mobile app platform. Launched during its first anniversary, the #FarmInMyPocket app has garnered over 60k+ unique downloads. The app makes it easiy for people to sign up on the platform, keep track of their investments by receiving regular updates in text, pictures and videos.
Also, over the course of 2 years, Farmcrowdy has not only won the trust of its 8k+ farmers and huge sponsor base, but has also won the trust of investors who are betting on it to become an important player in the Nigerian £30bn agricultural sector. In December 2017, the company raised an impressive $1 million seed investment from investors such as TechStars, Cox Ventures and Social Capital. It was also one of 15 startups that received $325,000 in funding and mentorship from the GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator Innovation Fund earlier this year.
Tonight we won the Best African AgriTech Solution award at the Apps Africa award ceremony in South Africa and we cannot contain our excitement! Thank you @AppsAfrica, we are taking #FarmcrowdyToTheWorld!
👩🌾👨🌾🚜🌍 pic.twitter.com/BywMLSqWNb— Farmcrowdy (@farmcrowdy) November 12, 2018
Farmcrowdy has won several awards. It won the Agro-innovator of the Year 2017 and Agritech platform of the year 2017 by the Nigeria Technology Awards. It was also the recipient of Digital Business of the Year Award by Global African Business Awards. The most recent award on their shelf is the Best African AgriTech Solution award at the just concluded 2018 AppsAfrica award ceremony.
Farmcrowdy is the only African startup to be selected for the US based Startup Accelerator, Techstars Atlanta in 2017. And were also one of the tech startups to be visited by the Vice-President, Yemi Osinbajo during his tech tour.
It has been an amazing 2 years of making positive impact in the lives of over 7,000 farmers.
A very big thank you to all our partners and sponsors for joining us to #EmpowerRuralFarmers
Thank you to @techcityng for the video coverage. #FarmcrowdyAt2 #EmpoweringFarmersSince2016 pic.twitter.com/tucRO1EJVJ— Farmcrowdy (@farmcrowdy) November 15, 2018
It also celebrated its second anniversary with the launch of Nigeria’s first annual National Digital Agriculture Day. The day is set aside for recognition of the contributions made to the country’s burgeoning agritech sector.
It’s all day celebration at our office today. That’s right, #Farmcrowdy is 2 and we are launching #DigitalAgricultureDay in Nigeria, isn’t that exciting!!!
So join us in celebrating🎉#FarmcrowdyAt2#DigitalAgricultureDay#NationalDigitalAgricultureDay#EmpoweringFarmersSince2016 pic.twitter.com/6MHYN3VMBe— Farmcrowdy (@farmcrowdy) November 14, 2018
In a statement, Farmcrowdy said, “the day will be used as a vehicle to highlight the essential role that agriculture plays in building and maintaining a strong economy, while encouraging other players in the sector and the public to participate in spreading the positive message about agriculture.”
Farmcrowdy is indeed reshaping the way people participate in farming and food production. From Technext, we say congratulations to you Farmcrowdy on your journey so far.
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