iFarmer

iFarmer is a digital agriculture platform that focuses on linking interested funders with farmers to support livestock farming in Bangladesh while promoting inclusive growth in livestock and agriculture.Currently we are focusing  on to create an alternate, sustainable financing option for the livestock farmers. The model runs on a profit-sharing model, where the farmer and the sponsor share profits after completing each cycle. 

iFarmer is aiming to become a platform for agriculture value chain financing, where on one side farmers will be able to create profile, get credit and performance rating and another side individual sponsor and financial organizations can invest and earn healthy return. 

Of the estimated 570 million farms in the world, 74% are located in Asia
and of them, 84 % is considered to be smallholders. Bangladesh has
roughly 14 million farming households and of them, 80% of the
farmers lack access to capital through formal channels. MFIs and informal
money lenders charge high-interest rate and the repayment is not
favorable. Banks have low penetration. 50 percent of the population and
80% the farmers in the country are still unbanked.

Farmers are often the lowest priority for financial lenders and other
service providers in the agriculture sector.Besides the absence of collateral,
it is hard for banks/NBFIs to lend to these farmers due to a lack of credit
history. Banks have to distribute at least 2 percent of their total loans in
the agricultural sector but it is hard to quantify the risks.It is also difficult
for banks/NBFIs to finance without proper information, imagine individual
people trusting and investing their money with a farway farmer!

We intend to serve millions of smallholder farmers and the 70% of the population who are unbanked or do not have access to appropriate financial services for their farming and micro business activities.

We are currently working with 1000 livestock farmers directly. We have trained them on livestock management, financial management, best practices. We also collect alternate data such as mobile usage patter (top ups, data plan etc), farming transactions, farming performance and combined with their asset base, previous farming history and a few other data points, we develop a performance score for them. It works like the rating for hotels on trip advisor or Uber driver. We have observed that farmers appreciate that and get on in a healthy competition to perform better to get higher "star ratings". This in turn ensures profitable farms and return on investment for the funders.

So far we have facilitated capital 120,000 USD to the farmers based on their performance ratings for livestock farming. We are aiming to grow at 10 folds by 2020 and disburse 1.2 million USD to livestock farmers.

iFarmer vision is to develop a  model where funders (individual and institutional) can get connected with rural farmers in a faster, efficient and less expensive manner. 

At the pilot stage we curated farmers through our field facilitators, collect KYC information and their demand for fund. We would then find individual funders to fund these farms. iFarmer provides farm monitoring and support services to the farmers and helps them to sell the livestock. We then shared the agreed return to the funder and the farmeras. iFarmer takes a management fee from the funder.

Currently we are building iFarmer V 2.0 to scale and grow the business. We are aiming to work with 12,000 farmers and disbursing 1.2 million USD in capital for livestock. However now farmers can apply for fund through our APP and Facebook Messenger ( Facebook is more popular in Bangladesh and some farmers still need awareness on how to use app). Farmers can upload pictures of their national ID card, answer a few KYC questions and in minutes will have a profile ready. We will then facilitate the fund from Institutions or individual funders , depending on the size and type of fund required. Once the fund has been disbursed, our field facilitators will verify that cow has been bought and put a IoT collar on the cow to provide unique proof of ownership and other information about the cow. The funders then have a desktop and app dashboard to monitor the cattle. They can also opt for insuring the cattle through our insurance partners. End end of the farming cycle iFarmer will facilitate the sale of the cow and share the return with farmers and funders, while getting a management fee.

iFarmer is the only business in Bangladesh that is using funding platform based model to provide low cost, collateral free capital to farmers, based on their performance rating. We are also innovative because through technology we are de-risking the investment in agriculture for individuals and institutions. Using performance rating to incentivize farmers to become better at repayment is also a very novel concept in the context of Bangladesh. 

2019: raised $120K from 140+ sponsors, and disbursed cattle to 200+ farmers. 

2020: We expect to raise $1.2M, disburse cattle to 1K+ farmers

2024: We expect to raise $25M and bring 10K farmers, entrepreneurs, farms, enterprises under our portfolio. 

2019: By end of this year we are expecting to bring 10 thousand plus farmers to our portfolio and disburse cattle worth over $300,000. 

2020: Launch the iFarmer app for all Livestock value chain actors seeking capital. 

2021: Develop performance scores/ratings for farmers for better funding opportunities and onboard 5 major banks and non-banking institutions as partners.

2022: Add at least 2 new agriculture verticals (such as agri-machinery and crops) to our portfolio and onboard financial institutions for capital disbursement through i-Farmer platform. 

2023: Launch our own micro lending platform for agriculture. 

2024: Integrate blockchain to bring in better transparency and allow more credible information about farmer`s assets and farming practices to ensure efficient funding opportunities. 

Creating an alternative investment platform is difficult to build and develop credibility. Plus there is not feasible cattle insurance product live yet in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is a disaster prompt country, and attack of infectious diseases and death of investment (Cow) are always a matter of concern in the case of cattle rearing. 

There are regulatory issues for iFarmer to get into micro-lending as the central bank of Bangladesh highly regulates the financial sector of the country. 

We offer appropriate and timely information to all our stakeholders (farmers, funders, partners) to ensure better credibility and trust in iFarmer. We also integrate technology to ensure reliable data and information for all of our stakeholders. 

We have our expert field team who ensures the best quality cows are purchased at the first, we also provide every kind of regular supports to our beneficiaries to ensure maximum insurance of the investment. Every beneficiary of iFarmer follows a checklist for best practiced essentials of cattle management.

Currently we have constant multi layered field monitoring and engagement with the farmers to ensure that they do not adopt such practices. Also, we recruit farmers through a group/cluster approach, so peer pressure is also there against such practices. Eventually once the tracking device is developed we can monitor the cattle in a more organised manner. Also we are trying to establish a formal cattle insurance product with collaboration with some insurance companies also. 

Currently we are a team of 14 members, from diversified fields like Agriculture, Development, Telecommunication, Tech Development and Project Management. 

a) We have experienced co-founders who have managed multi million dollar agriculture and rural market development project. So they are very well poised with the underlying constraints for access to finance in rural economies specially in agriculture. 

b) We have co founders and team members, who have managed large scale technology companies in healthcare, e-commerce and consumer products. 

c) We have economists, AI and machine learning experts, agriculturalists, engineers in our team, which gives the advantage of blending technology with social and economic innovation. 

d) The co founders have worked in global organisations such as World Bank, Rocket Internet, Maya, SPRING Accelerator, CARE Australia, Axiata and so on. They have also worked in countries like Bangladesh, Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, Nepal and India. 

Since our early days, TORU Institute of Inclusive Innovation has been working with us as our business incubator. They have helped us in different aspects designing our business, revenue model and setting up operation and monitoring structure. 

SDC Shomoshti Project, CARE Bangladesh has been one of our key partners for last one year. They help us to scale in terms of on boarding farmers. 

On, August, 2019 we have been selected as  one of the winners of UNCDF Women MSME Fintech Innovation Fund. We have received a grant for converting 500 female entrepreneurs to convert into small enterprises by developing their capacity, training proper market linkage. 

We have also been selected as one of the top Startups by Startup Bangladesh, ICT Division Bangladesh on early 2019. 

For our current model, We are keeping upfront service charge of BDT 3K for every cattle been sponsored through our platform. Plus we keep a certain portion of the profit after the cattle been sold. 

For our V-2.0 we want to be in digital intermediary for every transaction required and disbursed for agriculture value chain. We would maintain farmers, entrepreneurs, farms and enterprises credit score and would help individual and institutional sponsors to invest in agribusiness and earn profit. We would charge a certain commission for every transaction processed through our platform.

iFarmer is a self sustaining model if we can hit a certain number of cattle sponsorship. We have an upfront service charge model as regular money flow plus we get a profit sharing later on. 

But to reach that magic number, we need to develop a system, integrated by our website, app and IOT interventions, for which we require the initial investment. 

Tiger IT is one of the most established tech based organisation operating in Bangladesh, tagging up with MIT Solve makes this opportunity more interesting for a Startup like iFarmer for obviously as a great source for funding but also for exposure. 

During the journey of building iFarmer we have found that it's not only money that's can help us to achieve the longer objective, we would also require proper guidance, mentorship and time specific intervention to pull the trigger of our growth. 

Our key motivation for applying to the Tiger Challenge is to partnered up with a team of winners, whose engagement would not be limited to monetary terms, but 

In broader sense we want to establish iFarmer as an intermediary platform for all possible transactions initially for livestock market and gradually for whole agriculture industry.

We want to partnered up with the relevant government organisations for impacting life of maximum beneficiaries. 

We would also like partnered up with formal financial organisations like Banks and NBFI as without institutional involvement our goal would take much longer to be happen. 

Plus local NGOs and INGOs working with farmers and different agri value chain actors can also be an asset for us.