The FarmCrowdy Group (FCG) today launched its first subsidiary, FarmGate Africa, in an event well-attended by investors, sponsors, development partners and members of the media.
The new subsidiary, FarmGate Africa, is established to check major challenges in produce aggregation and marketing. It focuses on providing big buyers and processors direct access to farmers while eliminating the roles of the many intermediaries in the demand and supply value chain.
According to FarmCrowdy CEO, Onyeka Akumah, after receiving numerous feedback from farmers and major produce buyers regarding the problem of unstructured marketplaces, FarmGate Africa is their solution to that problem.
“Launching FarmGate as one of the subsidiaries in the FarmCrowdy group gives us huge joy with the expectations placed on us to continue to innovate and build new solutions. As we launch FarmGate Africa today, we have tirelessly worked for the past 6 months with the team to build relationships with blue-chip companies in and outside Nigeria, extend our relationships with thousands of farmer networks across the country and now, we are set to launch to the market with a strong team behind the idea.”
Onyeka Akumah, Founder and CEO
FarmGate hopes to leverage on FarmCrowdy’s well-established platform to sponsor aggregation of the produce and make sure the farmers get very good returns. Thus, it will allow everyday Nigerians the opportunity to fund the process of buying and selling what farmers already harvested.
FarmGate’s business model is simple albeit effective: To get the farmers closer to the processors by reducing the layers of intermediaries. It hopes to achieve this through two approaches.
The first approach is for the commodity trader. Here the sponsor selects from an available range of agro products to trade, specifies how much they want to trade in and is assigned an accounts manager to close the deal, and finally gets back their capital plus yield to end the investment period.
The second approach is for the commodity purchaser. Here the buyer selects from an available range of products, selects volume and an assigned accounts manager contacts user/farmer, Lastly order is processed and shipped to buyer’s delivery address.
FarmGate Co-Founder and MD, Kenneth Obiajulu
Speaking on the business model, Co-Founder and MD of FarmGate Africa, Kenneth Obiajulu says the platform simply brings farmers closer to processors and off-takers.
“Our business model is one that brings the farmers closer to the processors and off-takers by eliminating several layers of intermediaries. By doing this, FarmGate optimises market access to African farmers and also improves their income by at least 30%.“
Kenneth Obiajulu, Co-Founder and MD
The group’s partners present expressed their excitement at the development. Vice Chairman, Nigeria Agribusiness Group (NABG), Emmanuel Ijewere lauded FarmCrowdy because they provide practical solutions to agro problems. He enjoined the group to keep working hard and keep being successful for the sake of Nigeria.
Country Director of TechnoServe, Larry Umunna noted that this is the right time to launch an initiative like FarmGate because of the huge reawakening in the agric sector. He also noted that Farmcrowdy group is moving from talk to real action and reiterates TechnoServe’s efforts to work with Farmcrowdy to bring a significant amount of people out of poverty.
FarmGate is the first of several subsidiaries lined up by the FarmCrowdy Group. The second is already in the works and will be unveiled in May. Each subsidiary will be independent enough with its own team with a Director at the head. The FarmCrowdy group hopes to have at least 25,000 farmers in their pool by the time it celebrates its third anniversary in November.
