Agritech Startup, Farmcrowdy Raises $1 million in Seed Funding to Broaden Offering

Nigerian agritech startup, Farmcrowdy has raised $1 million in seed funding from global investors, Cox Enterprises and Techstars, as well as a local investor, Ajayi Solutions. This round comes as the startup prepares to broaden its offerings while readying itself for a Series A funding.

This additional seed investment brings its total investment to $2 million, having previously raised $1 million from investor firms in 2017 (of which current investors Cox Enterprises and Techstars were part of).

With this latest investment, Farmcrowdy says it would be increasing its reach and offerings for the next phase of the company’s growth. Over the next year, Farmcrowdy will be expanding across Nigeria to cover 50 per cent of all 36 states in the country.

It has also announced the launch of its Farmcrowdy Group, established to help build agri-tech solutions that enable the achievement of food security in Africa. Some of these solutions will include, utilising drone services for field analysis, improving farmers yield with additional research and 3D mapping.

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.

“Today’s announcement of this additional funding marks another milestone for us as we amplify our presence in the country and explore new opportunities. We are as well entering into formidable strategic partnerships that will grow the impact of our work.”

Onyeka Akumah, founder and CEO, Farmcrowdy

“We’re continually grateful that we have a group of investors who share and support our vision as much as we do. It is a great source of motivation for the entire team as we look to the next phase of growth as a company.”  

Onyeka Akumah

Speaking on the investment, Cody Simms, a partner at Techstars, says additional investment in Farmcrowdy was due to the startups mission to end poverty in Africa.

“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.”

Cody Simms, Techstars Partner.

Founded in 2016, by Onyeka Akumah, Farmcrowdy has helped to connect small scale farmers to sponsors who fund their farming projects and has overtime empowered about 12,000 farmers across 14 states in Nigeria.