Agrorite Bookie Software

Problems:

1. Low crop yield in farm which reduces profitability. 
2. Lack of access to competitive markets by smallholder farmers. 
3. Insufficient financial inclusion which undermines sustainability of cash flow. 
4. Inadequate farming technology which reduces innovation and productivity. 
5. Inability of the farmer to cover transportation and logistics of farm produce to off-takers. 

Solutions: 

1. Enlisting groups of small holder farmers through their associations to achieve better efficiency. 
2. Equipping and local integration of farmers to understand better ways of farming. 
3. Assigning field coordinators and extension officers to help the farmers with the digital framework for best practices and accountability. 
4. Linking farmers to off-takers to sell their farm produce at competitive prices. 
5. Data intelligence to ensure confidentiality and transparency.

If scaled regionally, the population of the malnourished will reduce across W/Africa as smallholder farmers make up over 70% of what we eat as a region. 

Nigeria has over 35million smallholder farmers that are not credit worthy and also lacks access to premium buyers. 

Growing up in a farming community afforded me the opportunity to relate with these farmers and observed the painful experience of seeing them in the farm working all day with little or nothing to show. 

These farmers are made to sell at ridiculous prices to middlemen due to their inability to access profitable buyers which resulted in high level of post-harvest waste for those that refuse to be exploited.

In August, 2014, I went on a journey to Benue State (which is regarded as the Food Basket of Nigeria) for my National Youth Service Corps, which lasted for a year. It was a nostalgic experience as the state is dominated by smallholder farmers. I attended several training for the purpose of acquiring knowledge on world best practices in agriculture and application of technology to boost agriculture which was sponsored by the then Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). 

We have been able to deploy technology to help farmers with their GPS locations, soil content, soil texture, weather forecast which has been added tremendously to their productivity. We current have over 8,200 farmers on board.

Agrorite enables smallholder farmers access credits, data driven advisory services and premium markets needed to help them have a successful farming cycle with a decent return. 

We follow through the process of ensuring that farmers make profit at every farm cycle with our software integration system, Agrorite Bookie and  Performance Indicator Technology which reports the farmers daily activities, scores them and indicate payments due to them. We source for loans via peer to peer lending on our platform and also through different financial and wealth management institutions.

Since our launch in 1st May, 2019 - we have been able to raise over $1,550,000 to work on different agricultural value chains such as Cashew, Cassava, Poultry, Maize, Soybean, Ginger and Potatoes. 

We register new farmers daily and currently working with 8,200+ farmers in 14 States in Nigeria. Our farmers have worked in over 5,000ha and with Memorandum of Understanding with different premium processing companies both locally and internationally to buy after harvest.

We also have endorsements from Airbus Technologies, UK Government, Nigerian Stock Exchange; Dubai Chambers of Commerce, Nigerian Exports Promotion Council; Nigerian Investment Promotions Council; Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture to mention a few.

Agrorite Bookie deepens the culture that promotes the continuity of contributions to social insurance schemes from informal sector workers, incorporating behavioral tools that incentivize and encourage financial savings, transparency, and accountability.

The aim of uplifting the livelihood of smallholder farmers in order to mitigate the COVID-19 Pandemic effect on food systems is crucial in reducing the anticipated explosion of food insecurity which is a high social impact scheme.

Agrorite is in the business of putting quality and nutritious foods on the table and leveraging on technology to ensure that farmers become profitable and financially inclusive. 

Small holder farmers are the backbone of agriculture in Africa as they make up over 75% of production. 

Our business model is designed to cater for the social well being of these farmers and reward them on a performance basis. According to our Performance Reward template for farmers, we have essentially given the farmers the opportunity of increase the income by over 60% if the fall under grade B and over 80% if they fall under grade A. 

We hold strongly the opinion that the sustainability of any agricultural process is largely dependent on the quality of engagement with the small holder farmers.

We are looking at improving our technology and raising more institutional funding. 

Our aim is to grow more export-worthy agricultural commodities and expand to more regions in W/Africa. In order to achieve this, we must ensure the best quality with the right nutritional content is produced (which will require technology/sensor) and we increase our capacity to reach out to more farmers with more farmlands (which will require funding)

Since our launch in 1st May, 2019 - we have been able to raise over $1,550,000 to work on different agricultural value chains such as Cassava, Poultry, Maize, Soybean, Ginger and Potatoes. 
We register new farmers daily and are currently working with over 8,200 farmers in 14 States. Our farmers have worked in over 5,000 ha and we have entered Memorandum of Understanding with different premium processing companies that offtake these produce. 

We also have endorsements from UK Government, Airbus Technologies, Nigerian Stock Exchange; Dubai Chambers of Commerce, Nigerian Exports Promotion Council; Nigerian Investment Promotions Council; Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture to mention a few.

In Nigeria, processing companies are finding it difficult to get quality and nutritious farm produce due to several bans on importation by the government.  Farmers are also not getting the best yield and make losses due to their inability to locate these processors to sell at a competitive price. Agrorite is the technology solution that connects the farmers to credits, advisory and technical support for productivity and direct connection to the processors to sell at profitable margins.

Substitutes: Farmers will have to sell through exploitative middle men and processing companies not being able to scale as a result of their inability to import or aggregate the farmers capable of producing.

In conclusion, change to me is when you redefine an existing solution to suck less.

We currently have 15 premium processing companies and 50 market distributing agents ready to buy from our 5,100 small holder farmers. The absence of middlemen also means that products are now traceable to farmers, which benefits the consumers (processors) in terms of tracing it quality and nutritional standards.

Notable Customers:  Grand Cereals (UAC),  Unilever Nigeria  Flour Mills of Nigeria,  Psaltry International,  RT Agro Industries Limited,  Taghini Limited,  Green Pasture Limited , Foods Concept Plc (Chicken Republic) to mention a few.

Our business model is simple and made to be replicated to the benefit of smallholder farmers in Africa.

We shall onboard farmers in the W/Africa region and help them attain profitability with access to improved seedings, data driven advisory and premium market. We are already in talks with farmers in Benin Republic, Ghana and Guineas Bissao 

Our first set of users were generated by families, friends, word of mouth and referrals. 

Our communication strategy is built with a high level of local integration and is rolled out in different individual languages to suit different farmers in different communities.

Our community outreaches, premium news publications and social media engagements have also increased the small holder farmers we are managing, gotten more Agroriters (Investors) and Processing Companies to buy from our farmers.

Our APIs are currently being operated internally but can be replicated to adopt the solution.

Most of our operations are done in low connectivity environments with smallholder farmers having low literacy and numeracy proficiency.

We deploy extension representatives, involves community leaders as stakeholders and deploy IVRs in farmer's indigenous languages to easy training exercise before implementing projects.   

We are aligned with Sustainable Developments Goals (SDG) 1, 2, 10 and 12 with a focus on goal 2 (zero hunger)

In one year, we have served over 6,000 smallholder farmers.

In five years, we will be able to serve over 50,000 small holder farmers

The ultimate goal is to create a sustainable impact in the livelihood of the small holder farmers and push towards realising the prospective valuable on agribusiness in Africa as $1trillion in 2030 by World Bank.

Agrorite aims to set up more aggregation centers regionally to boost fair trade and also process raw agricultural produce like Cashew and Shea Butter into finished products.

Barriers:

Unfavourable regional policies.

Insurgencies.

Infrastructural deficits in the continent 

These barriers can be resolved by leveraging on the power of technology in making informed decisions.

Better engagement with stakeholders.

Full time: 23

Part time: 11

Adhoc: 46

Competitors are of 3 types: (1) Local Agric Aggregators (2) Global Agritech Companies and (3) Local Agritech Companies

(1) Local Agric Aggregators are informal association of small holder farmers that are responsible for bringing them together for projects. Their lack of structure, technology and problem-solving mechanisms limits their ability to progress. We have some of them with us as adhoc extension workers.

(2) Global companies like Farmers Business Network (FBN) and Agrible are competitors but it will be difficult for them to meet the needs of the processors in Africa. It is easy for them to offer farmers with information and get data but what about locally integrating farmers in a traditional community that requires intense stakeholders engagement to carry out any activity. Recently, Mercy Corps approached us for partnership in integrating farmers in Yobe State that were displaced by insurgence because they recognize local integration as a key ingredient.

Local Agritech Companies like Farmcrowdy and Thriveagric are still in awe seeing what we have been able to achieve in few months. These companies are yet to figure out how to commercialise these farmers rather than use them for a farm cycle period. We teach farmers how to fish rather than give them fish with our various financial inclusion packages. Our investors also enjoy our financial services powered by Paystack. We believe that as long as we focus on solving the processor’s need and keeping our integrity intact with Farmers and Investors, we will continue grow our business. 

Link:  https://businessday.ng/agriculture/article/agric-investment-opportunities-on-nigerian-agritech-platforms-september-2019/

Airbus Technologies                                                                                      UP42 Technologies                                                                                 Airtel Nigeria

Insurance Partners:                                                                             Leadway Insurance                                                                                 Royal Exchange Insurance 

Commercial Partners:                                                                              FCMB                                                                                                            GIZ                                                                                                      Afrinvest                                                                                                    IITA

Offtakers: 
Grand Cereals (UAC) 
Unilever Nigeria 
Flour Mills of Nigeria 
Psaltry International 
RT Agro Industries Limited 
Taghini Limited 
Green Pasture Limited 
Foods Concept Plc (Chicken Republic) 
WACOT Limited

We operate as Business to Business (B2B) by ensuring that the smallholder farmers are aggregated and the agricultural produce get to the premium buyer at a competitive price. 

We are asking the right question and providing solutions accordingly and with our Farmers Performance Improvement Plan, we get a lot of exciting response even before the commencement of another farming cycle.

The farmers are treated fairly with respect and all stakeholders are involved in ensuring a successful run all the time. 

Toyosi Ayodele = $30,500 
Crowdfunding for Poultry = $114,055 
Crowdfunding for Maize = $129,500 
Crowdfunding for Cassava = $425,500 
Crowdfunding for Poultry 2 = $275,000 
Crowdfunding for Soybean = $180,000 
Crowdfunding for Potatoes = $85,450 
Crowdfunding for Ginger = $22,500 (ongoing) 
Institutional funding from Barbedous = $345,000 
Institutional funding from Globecross = $20,000 
Grant from SDGs Africa = $9,000