ePoultry.NG

ePoultry.NG is Nigeria’s first sustainable digital poultry investment platform. It is an online platform leveraging on technology to provide funding, technical skills and access to market for smallholder poultry farmers. It also gives middle income earners access to grow their income via remotely investing in poultry farming without directly operating the farm. If scaled globally, we can raise more smallholder and rural farmers from poverty, create wealth, achieve food security with guaranteed access to finance via our crowd funding platform. We are sustainable because we convert chicken droppings into organic fertilizer for crop farmers.

Demand for chicken meat is about 2 million metric tonnes annually in Nigeria but farmers, majority of whom are smallholder farmers are only able to produce 600,000 metric tonnes per annum due to lack of technical support in terms of skills and knowledge, access to finance and access to market. They also run into losses at times and cannot scale their businesses. The 60% difference in demand or 1.4 million metric tonnes are unmet and this has encouraged the illegal importation of poultry products, costing the Nigerian economy about US $2.7 billion per annum while exporting jobs abroad. Additionally, the smuggled and imported poultry products have been discovered to contain chemicals like formalin which are causative agents of non-communicable diseases like cancer and kidney failure.

According to the world poverty clock, over 91 million people or about 46.5% of Nigeria’s population live in extreme poverty. A World Bank 2016 report found that “half of working Nigerians are in smallholder farming” but this group accounts for the “poorest 40 percent of the population compared to only 17 percent of wage workers.” The most affected are smallholder farmers in rural communities who account for the poorest 40% of Nigeria's population. Their major problem according to them is financing and from interaction, they need greater access to market and improved technical skills for greater yield and productivity. ePoultry.NG solves these by providing financing via our crowd funding platform, technical skills in form of continuous training and access to market to increase the sales with greater returns/profits for smallholder poultry farmers beginning from Bayelsa and throughout the Niger Delta region of Nigeria and beyond.

An online platform (web and mobile) leveraging on technology to provide funding, technical skills and access to market for smallholder poultry farmers. We mobilize funding for Agriculture, specifically poultry farming, from the hands of those who have it, to the hands of those who need it. We give investors/farm sponsors access to grow their money via remotely investing in poultry farming without directly farming themselves. From the investments from farm sponsors, we then provide inputs and teach farmers on how best to utilize inputs for maximum output. At maturity, we also help them sell the produce as we have a deep understanding of the market having founded Tonyve Farms in 2014 which is arguably among the top poultry companies in Bayelsa State, Nigeria. To further manage the farmers, we are creating a community/outgrower scheme of 1000 active smallholder poultry farmers by 2021 who are raising birds for us to process and give the market.

We are adopting technology using an online/crowdfunding platform (web and mobile) to provide funding, technical skills and access to market for smallholder poultry farmers. By doing so, we mobilize funding for Agriculture from the hands of those who have it, to the hands of those who need it (unbanked smallholder farmers). We give investors or farm sponsors access to grow their money via remotely investing in poultry farming without directly farming themselves, teach farmers on how best to utilize inputs for maximum output and at maturity, help farmers sell the produce as we have a deep understanding of the market having founded Tonyve Farms in 2014 which is arguably among the top poultry companies in Bayelsa State, Nigeria. Finally, we are also creating a community and outgrower scheme of 1000 active smallholder poultry farmers who are raising birds for us to process and give the market in the next 12 months.

Our solution uses a software to raise funding for smallholder farmers (ePoultry.NG or ePoultry App)

Our track record founding and running an established poultry farm, Tonyve Farms, which was founded in 2014 gives us every insider information we need to drive ePoultry.NG to success. Piloting with 5 farm sponsors with revenue of 1000 USD, over 100 sign ups and many more showing interest every week validates our business as one which is here to stay and will solve the problems. Farmers are also very excited about it and have cooperated with us so far.

Currently, we serve 25 people (20 farmers and 5 farm sponsors).

In one year, we intend to serve 10,000 farm sponsors and 1,100 farmers with 4400 dependents

In five years, we intend to serve 200,000 farm sponsors and 100,000 farmers with 400,000 dependents.

• Create a community/outgrower scheme of 1, 100 active smallholder poultry farmers and over 100,000 farmers in five years
• Raise 12 million broilers annually by December 2020 (1000 farmers to raise 1000 broilers every cycle and over 10 million birds annually in 5 years)
• Raise 100,000 laying birds by March 2021 and over 5 million laying birds in 5 years
• Lift 4, 400 people from poverty, with an average 4 family members per each smallholder farmer in 12 months and over 100,000 smallholder farmers and 400,000 dependents in five years
• Make poultry farming youth friendly and lucrative for people to venture into it
• Train and re-train farmers who subscribe to our outgrower scheme and smallholder poultry farmers community
• Create over 2000 jobs both for the farmers we engage, those who man our operations and those who resell our products within 12 months and over 110,00 jobs in five years
• Create a retail scheme with market men and women who profit from retailing our products in markets across the Niger Delta beginning from Bayelsa State and other African markets.
• Set up a mini chicken processing facility that buys off all broilers and spent layers raised to be processed, stored and sold within the Niger Delta and beyond. Create organic fertilizer from chicken dungs for crop farmers to thrive in the Niger Delta
• Expand into Ghana after one year and eventually to Rwanda, Zambia, Botswana and Uganda in 5 years.

Our major barriers are financial and technical.

Technical - A competent in house technology team of software developers and engineers who can build and have the platform run properly. Hiring the right people to drive the vision across board.

Financial: Capacity to take up setting structures, office and operation base, funding technology team to build platform, funds for aggressive marketing as well employing right hands to drive the product in the marketplace.  

Others are 

1. Strategically investing in technology: As a start up with limited resources, technology investments is hampered as the focus is to invest in activities with high ROI.

2. Online/Cyber security and risks 

Technical: By building an inhouse team of software engineers to drive our platform to success.

Financial: Bootstrap and raise external investments on case by case basis for every phase of our growth

For onlien hacks: We are working to host our platform on Amazon AWS Cloud Hosting, the best in the world with advanced security options

We have 6 persons working currently. Myself (founder), 3 co-founders and 2 part time staff in technology and operations making us 6

We have diverse backgrounds and experience in agribusiness, strategy, technology management, accounting, investment, finance, development finance, banking, engineering, SME development, poverty, food security, entrepreneurship, risk management, among others. We also have trainings in agriculture, food security, development economics, accounting, finance international business, international management, computer science, engineering, project management, health, safety and environment among others. Our founder, Anthony Owei also founded Tonyve Farms, most successful poultry farm business in Bayelsa State, Nigeria today. He is also a 2019 Obama Foundation Leader and a OKP fellow of the Dutch Government where he won a fully funded scholarship to study for an MBA in Food Security. Everyone also believes in the pursuit of a food secure Africa where numerous smallholder farmers are lifted from poverty. Our founder is a MSc Development Economics and MBA Food Security student, our Chief Strategy Officer is concluding her MSc Entrepreneurship, our CFO, holds MSc Distinction in International Management from Henley Business School, England while our COO is a mechanical engineering graduate and a certified project professional, HSE professional and aerodrome rescue and fire fighter.

To reach our goals mentioned above, We are partnering with:

• Digital Nexus Interactive by outsourcing our marketing functions and digital media campaigns/ads to them
• Leadway Assurance Company Limited to insure all funds provided by farm sponsors via the platform
• Chevorn's Foundation for Partnership in the Niger Delta (PIND Foundation) to give us bigger access to markets for the products.

All these partnerships have been sealed. 

We are an intermediary between smallholder farmers and farm sponsors. We use the online platform to raise money from middle and high income earners who wish to invest in farming without directly operating the farm. We take 2.5% of investments as initial income to train farmers, use 2.5% for insurance and buy farm inputs with the 45% of the investments. Smallholder farmers into do the farming, we take it off them and then split profit in the ration 35:35:30. 35% goes to both the farm sponsor and farmer each while we retain 30% as our income. 

• We make money by taking a percentage of all profits on investments from farm sponsors.
• Profit sharing formula is 35% each to farmers and farm sponsors while ePoultry.NG takes 30%
• We will also charge 2% management fees on profits from farm sponsors. 

Solve provides a supportive community and platform of like minds who can mentor us to avoid pitfalls and do our AgriTech business better for more impact, access to experts especially in technology/software development to help launch and design a workable and user friendly platform and access to funders to help us scale across Africa. We believe this is a huge opportunity and platform to lift millions of African smallholder and rural farmers from poverty, create wealth on the continent and achieve a food secured Africa. We would also like to be part of the MIT network as we see this as a platform to advance our solution in order to make the world a better place. 

The World Food Programme - partnership to adopt our solution in their countries of operations as this can easily have funds made available for agriculture and also improve food security and nutrition while pulling many others from poverty at the same time.

The prize is centered on how can citizens and communities create and improve social inclusion and shared prosperity - Our solution is hinged on these values. We engage several smallholder farmers in communities and have them engaged under an umbrella. They grow together and so take advantage of the economies of scale to reduce cost, make more profit and have the community benefit immensely. We also use this to promote intra-community unity and peace. 

The Women Prize will be used to solely dedicate at least 50% of funds raised targeting female farmers especially single mothers and widows. We take gender balance seriously and we are all advocates for gender inclusion and equality. We believe economically empowered women can make better choices. Our management team of 4 people has 2 women and 2 men. We believe we are the right team to drive this as well if given the Women Prize.