Soupah Farm-en-Market Limited

In Nigeria, there is a breakdown of the agricultural value chain preventing food produced from reaching consumers.

The lack of effective distribution is a major problem and leads to a high rate of post-harvest loss that poses food security threat to the country. We are improving efficiency by utilizing technology to improve procurement interfaces between farmers and retailers.

Retailers place their orders on our platform and we use this precise information to source for produce from our farmers on our platform.

We match this demand and supply by collecting fresh produce from rural farmers at fair prices and delivering to vendors at affordable prices with full transparency.

If scaled, our business model allows us to use technology to collect a wealth of data that can be used to transform mobility for food, enhance food condition tracking and encourage transparency, end-to-end food traceability and information sharing across the supply chain globally.

Nigerians spend 60 percent of their income buying food. The high cost of food reflects the markups from a series of middlemen, before produce finally gets to the consumers. We set out to tackle this ‘hidden middle’ on the value chain and right-size food costs.

The National Bureau of Statistics said 51.9% of Nigerians were living in "absolute poverty” with over 91 million Nigerians living on less than 1 dollar per day. Which makes it difficult for most people to afford nutritious foods.

Also over 14 million small-scale farmers—who produce 98 percent of fruits and vegetables—face the lack of market access. Currently, farmers work with a network of middlemen by transporting their harvested produce to the wholesale market every morning. Due to the perishable nature of fruits and vegetables, the clock starts ticking against the freshness of the produce; leaving an unfair bargaining power in the hands of the middlemen who end up buying extremely low from farmers and selling very high to retailers.

Sadly this causes African farmers to lose 32% of their annual income, presents a food security issue for those living in poverty and exacerbates environmental degradation.

By deploying technology to aggregate a fragmented logistics space, we are innovatively tackling inefficiencies in the food supply chain in Nigeria, while generating incremental value for the entire chain.

Our business model is simple – we aggregate the required produce every evening such as tomatoes, peppers, onions, banana, pineapple, etc of the informal retailers and leveraging this precise information to efficiently source produce directly from rural farmers every morning which we deliver to retailers with a QR code that can be scanned and links to url that explains all the information about the food (where we got the produce from, at what time was it harvested, and for how long it had travelled).

We use our web application that allows us to register both farmers and vendors. Registered vendors place orders through our platform or by using a dedicated google form or calling our fulfilment centre and after receiving vendors’ orders, we use this precise information to source for produce from our farmers by calls or SMS due to limited bandwidth in rural areas.

All purchases and delivery are recorded electronically on our platform to improve information systems on the value chain—while keeping the data of our supply chain tracing.

Our solution removes exploitative middlemen & pay farmers well to lift them out of poverty (SDGoal1) &significantly contributes to lower food prices to achieve zero hunger (SDGoal 2) with economic growth for retailers (SDGoal 8) and affordable nutrition for consumers (SDGoal 4) cutting down post-harvest losses at the first mile of the value chain (SDGoal 12) as well as reducing the amount of methane emission into the atmosphere (SDGoal 13).

We are revitalizing rural communities and closing social gap by working directly with farmers to trade in a more transparent environment with traceable farm data that gives them financial inclusion. Farmers can now access micro-credit with the proper farm sales record captured by our platform .Our business improves the ecological footprint by reducing the recorded 30 – 50% of the PHL of food on the value chain in Africa.

As the pandemic unfold, disruption in domestic food supply chain is evident however our business solves this by shrinking the agricultural value chain &as people embrace social distancing to slow the spread of COVID-19, our business model aids the flow of foods directly from the point of harvest to the point of sales to shorten food journey for millions of people.

A middleman collects produce on a farm and gives another until 3rd stage that transport harvested produce in recklessly stacked wicker baskets &rickety van, over a 3-8-hour journey; blistering 96 degrees Fahrenheit on arrival to wholesale market. Our solution uses crates and quality control assessment to reduce post-harvest losses.

At the market, due to damaged vegetables, the middleman will reduce farmers’ pay to cover the loss and pay the farmer in 3-4 days. The middleman eventually sells high to retailers who also sell high to consumers to make marginal profit. Our solution is removing artificial shortages that increase food prices.

We are using technology to innovatively address the structuration and transparency of the food logistics supply chain by matching rural smallholder farmers with urban food retailers; a fit that DOES NOT YET exist in the country.

Our digital platform creates a prompt access, and using mobile and proposed blockchain technology, we ensure that food safety and malnutrition in the Africa’s rapidly expanding cities does not worsen, allowing more people to live healthy.

Unlike the middlemen, our model shrinks the agricultural value chain to increase efficiency and aid the flow of food by creating a prompt market access for foods directly from the point of harvest to the point of sales within the shortest possible time.

While the middlemen are just concerned with making profit, we are concerned with improving the livelihood of farmers, and making foods cheaper for final consumers to tackle the prevalence of hunger and food insecurity, while also protecting the planet against methane emissions from post-harvest losses.

The core technology that powers our solution is the mobile technology. While at the moment we still deploy web applications, our milestone is to advance web application to a proprietary technology that is mobile enabled; built on a private, permissioned blockchain. The mobile application targeted at the farmers will have offline capabilities and data because of the absence of reliable internet connection in the rural areas. This feature will allow inputted data to synch once there’s internet connectivity.

At the moment, our platform allows farmer to schedule their harvest calendar and this data is broken down into figures by our procurement team for us to make purchase planning and source produce collection from registered farmers’ harvest calendar in direct proportion to retailers’ request.

On the same platform, retailers can place the order for produce needed which eventually gets delivered to retailers’ shop doors.

Our expansion plan is to integrate blockchain technology into a mobile application to allow a direct, secure and fast transactions from the farmers to record all food data (with offline capabilities for rural farmers) to the vendors to place orders and monitor their business performances, down to the final consumers to access all the information about the food

Mobile phone usage in third world countries is playing a vital role for the enhancement of farmers business towards agriculture. Recently, communication through mobile phones is considered very important in enhancing farmers' access to better understand agricultural market situation.

Farming communities appreciate mobile phone as easy, fast and convenient way to communicate and get prompt answers of respective problems. Nowadays, the mobile phone has generated an opportunity for the farmers to keep in touch with buyers. Through this important technology, they directly keep in touch with off takers(us) who offer to buy produce at reasonable prices.

This device has given new direction and approach to farmers to communicate directly and share about recent advances with each other. Research showed that mobile phones have saved energy and time of farmers and ultimately improved their income. 

Our theory of change is improving the livelihood of smallholder farmers in a way that will shrink off multiple middlemen to reduce food prices for Nigeria’s growing population.

Ineffective distribution is a big issue that causes more than 45% of fruits and vegetables produced in Nigeria to go to waste every year, leading to food security threat and income loss for the 83% women players on the Agricultural value chain withan opaque system that is highly disfunctional.

Until we started, rural smallholder farmers in Nigeria worked with a network of multiple middlemen to transport harvested produce in to the wholesale market. We want to change this model to a more effective way by tackling the “how” and the “why” of the informal food distribution chain.

We currently work with a network of 368 smallholder farmers who have over 20 hectares of land in Oyo, Ogun and Osun states in Nigeria and work with over 70 urban retailers.

Since inception, we have gleaned well over 9846 tons of post-harvested fruits and vegetables; turning them into farmers’ and retailers’ profit and consequently prevented the emission of over 1792 tons of methane gas into the atmosphere while at the same time increased the intake of fresh nutritious foods with reduced food prices by 31%. Within the next one year, we aspire to grow the number of farmers we impact to over 65000 farmers in 2 African countries and to directly service over 28000 urban retailers.

We aim at over 900,000 smallholder farmers across Africa in 5 years while also sourcing produce conveniently for over 400,000 retailers.

Within the next one year, we aspire to impact over 65000 farmers to help escape the troubles of delivering to the market, avoiding the network of middlemen and offer timely and digital payment for financial inclusion as well as support over 28000 urban retailers

 We aim at over 900,000 smallholder farmers across Africa in 5 years while also sourcing produce conveniently for over 400,000 retailers; connecting over 4000 tonnes of food daily that is targeted at increasing the affordability and accessibility of fresh foods by 68% for ‘nutritious’ impact on over 10 million people with full transparency and blockchain traceability to achieve food safety 

Our main challenge is Growing revenue. This is related to adequate access to funds that will help us to scale up our operations and grow our revenue

The second challenge is dealing with HR issue – finding the right staff, hiring them, and ensuring they buy into the vision of the company. We have a hiring plan but yet to be fully executed to control payroll cost. 

I believe training opportunities such as SOLVE Accelerator will help us achieve our business objectives by adding a knowledgeable impact in the areas of agribusiness operations and processes, we will be exposed to the best finance options needed to scale our impact and mentored through investment readiness.

Having a rare opportunity to get trained on more sustainable ways of growing our social agritech will go a long way to help us overcome this business challenge and will also be a platform of beneficial collaboration and networking that will allow us to build professional relationships that will lead to suitable partnerships.

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TOTAL STAFF: 10(FULL TIME)

Gender: 80% Women/20% Men

Youth Bracket: 70% youths below 25 years old/30% youths below 31 years old

We are a women-founded, women-led start-up by 4 young vibrant women and cumulatively we have over 24 years of experience in the Agribusiness and sales industry.

Ifeoluwa Olatayo (Founder/Full-Time): Our head of business holds a certificate in Entrepreneurial Management from the EDC, Lagos Business School and with 9 years of business experience. She coordinates company’s resources (people, facilities, information and finance) to achieve results.

Bukola Olawale (Co-founder/Full-Time): Our head of operations holds a degree in Agricultural Production Science, Federal University of Agriculture, Nigeria with 5 years’ experience. She is in charge of procurements and the day-to-day collection of supplies from farms and also coordinate assistance and advise for farmers on how to improve their yield, provide extension services, register farmers and maintain community relations. 

Elizabeth Olufemi (Co-founder/Full-Time): With 9 years of sales experience and a degree in Psychology, Our Chief Marketing Officer is responsible for facilitating sales from vendors and generating replenishment lists. She doubles as the head of distribution and works closely with our registered vendors on customer experience and support services like promotions of their microbusinesses.

Adesuwa Izekor (Co-founder/Full Time): Our Chief Technology Officer holds a degree in Computer Engineering with 2 years of field experience. She drives the company’s technology architecture and leads the IT infrastructure team. 

Scaling up Business in Nutrition Network(SBN)  is under the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition(gain) and we partner with them for technical skills need for the continuous training of staff on safe food handling and operations 

Our B2B marketplace has a business model that offers value to agricultural value chain participants in the following areas;

Market for Framers

Farmers now have an easier and more predictable access to market, enabling them to improve their livelihoods and lifts them out of poverty

Enterprise growth for Urban Retailers

Urban Retailers can now conveniently use the platform to easily order produce which are delivered directly at their shops at very good prices for profitability

Affordability foods for Urban Dwellers

Urban dwellers can now get access to better quality and safer food at cheaper prices to achieve zero hunger

Tackling Food insecurity

With careful handling, storage at proper temperatures, and faster delivery, we are reducing post-harvest losses on fresh produce for increased food availability and security which reduced the amount of methane gasses that is depleting the atmosphere.

We revolutionize the way fresh foods get to consumers and run a standard model that eliminates the exposure to these conditions from harvest to consumption to improve the nutritional quality of what our consumers eat.

I want to be a part of SOLVE because I am interested in meaningfully engaging myself with the trainings and opportunities that responds to the sustainable development of Africa and the world at large.

I see this platform as a space to learn, share and exchange ideas and best practices on innovation and sustainable development of entrepreneurship on my continent and by being a part of the solution, I am more than delighted to get my inspiration, education and mentorship needed to scale.

I believe I will be able to have broadened horizon, technical support and adopt the learnings to practicalize with solving the challenges we are currently facing as a business.

I want to turn my business from just being a lifestyle to being a legacy.

For now, we are a local business but with a global goal of contributing to a greener planet and a better society. I believe being a SOLVER  will help us achieve our business objectives with talent recruitment and revamping our tech solution.

We will also learn and be exposed to the right marketing strategies and execution mechanisms that generate better ROI and hacks our revenue and social growth as well as getting all the mentoring and exposure to secure appropriate external funding.

I would love to be mentored by the best and the brightest in the world of big business and desire to be mentored by an MIT Faculty.

Ineffective distribution is a big issue that causes more than 45% of fruits and vegetables produced in Nigeria to go to waste every year, leading to food security threat and income loss for the 83% women players on the Agricultural value chain.

From a gender lens perspective, our innovation allows women to utilize technology for trade and promote economic growth and advancement for them. 

We will use this funds to raise an Army of Food Connectors on a franchising model for 12 trained women agripreneurs.

This will be a financed franchising model that will equip interested agripreneurs with training, our blockchain enabled mobile technology, expertise, collection centers, solar cold rooms, RFID tagged crates and temperature controlled trucks to collect the supply of fresh produce from rural smallholder farmers and deliver it to the demand of urban retailers in their various communities.

By equipping more women with our business model, our franchisees can leverage our technology resources to connect both beneficiary groups. Duplicating our solution using the franchising model will make it happen at a lower cost and with higher impact but most importantly, help us to also empower them to fight hunger in every city in Africa.

We are using technology to create a more transparent and efficient food supply chain and digitally include rural farmers that have been marginalized. We use our web application that allows us to register rural farmers and farmers can now use their mobile devices to digitally capture farming activities, access input on credit, get agronomic advice and extension services, schedule harvest, carry out quality control assessment, receive purchase orders from us and sell produce to us using weight standardization

All purchases and delivery are recorded electronically on our platform which aims to give rural farmers financial inclusion. Farmers can now receive digital payment and build financial identity for that makes it possible for them to access micro-credit with the proper record captured by our platform which builds accurate scoring and performance data.

Our business levels the playing field for smallholder farmers in Africa by providing them with technology, services and information they need to thrive. All data collected in our business process are effectively mined to make informed decisions and to discover root causes of issue with farmers beyond lack of access to market( adequate extension service, crop rotation, etc.)

Our digital platform is creating a prompt access and connect harvested foods from rural farmers to urban retailers with full transparency and traceability to achieve food safety.Our business allows farmers to trade in a more transparent environment with traceable farm data and this measures allow rural, hitherto neglected farmers, to  follow strict handling practices and input choices( for example organic or harmful-chemical free fertilizers, fortified/improved seeds, standardization, etc) that will make local farmers’ output a best choice for local consumers; and as such be opened to international agricultural markets

At the local level, we building a blockchain integrated technology that allows consumers to trace their food to it's origin and make "nutritional decisions" that can impact the health and well being of millions of people.