Digital Agriculture in LMICs - 6 Dec #38
Kenya’s Amini raises $4M, partners for agri insurance; Funders come to Twiga’s rescue; India’s Arya.ag reaches profitability; EchoVC new $2.5M pre-seed fund targets agri-climate techs
28/11/23
Twiga gets undisclosed funding to navigate troubled waters
Kenyan agri B2B e-commerce platform Twiga Foods has reportedly secured undisclosed funding as part of a business refinancing process. The announcement comes as the agritech is facing a USD 262,000 debt collection lawsuit from Incentro Africa, a cloud services vendor and a Google services reseller. Twiga has raised the new funding from Creadev, TLcom Capital and DOB Equity, all investors involved in the company’s 2021 USD 50 million Series C round to foster scale up in Kenya and East Africa. According to reports, beside Incentro, Twiga has had issues over unpaid dues with other suppliers. In August this year, Twiga concluded the process of laying off about one third of its staff in an effort to reduce operational costs by 40 percent. The company also shut down 11 depots. The undisclosed funding shows a strong response from investors to back up the company as it looks to become a lean, agile, and cost-effective organisation.
Photo credit: Twiga Foods, The Kenyan Wall Street
30/11/23
India’s B2B market linkage platform Arya.ag reaches profitability
India’s Arya.ag, a B2B market linkage platform for the grain value chain, has announced that revenues from operations grew to INR 2.9 billion (USD 34.8 million) in the 2023 financial year representing a 50% increase from the previous year. Income from storage and warehousing services raised 22% in the year, making for 68% of the total revenue, with the rest coming from procurement of service agreements and interest on loans offered to farmers. The agritech has stated that it has now reached profitability. Established in 2013, Arya.ag operates about 11,000 warehouses in 21 states. Through its market linkage platform, farmers and farmer producing organisations (FPOs) receive warehousing services, fumigation and quality testing services, and access local and international buyers. The platform also embeds financial services, such as farmer loans against their stored commodity in the platform. The agritech is reportedly valued at USD 300 million having raised to date around USD 82 million.
01/12/23
Kenya’s climate tech Amini bags $4M, partners for agri insurance
Kenyan climate tech Amini has raised USD 4 million in a seed funding round led by Salesforce Ventures and the Female Founders Fund. Others investors taking part in the round are Satgana, Pale Blue Dot and Superorganism, who had previously backed the startup in its USD 2 million pre-seed round earlier this year. Amini has developed a solution that uses geodata from satellites and ground truth data (e.g. IoT and research data) with AI to drive supply chain resilience and economic inclusivity for farmers in Africa. The platform supports different use cases including flood detection, decision making support, and traceability/visibility in supply chains in Africa. Amini’s leadership is made of a group of female entrepreneurs – Kate Kallot, Amini’s founder and CEO, Muthoni Karubiu, head of operations, and Eshani Kaushal, head of business development and government operations.
Shortly after the funding announcement, Amini also announced their participation in a partnership with multinational insurance company AON and the African Development Bank for regenerative agriculture and crop insurance. Under the partnership, Amini’s data and technology will be used to develop new de-risking solutions and build capacity to assess and monitor the changing risk environment.
01/12/23
EchoVC’s new $2.5M pre-seed fund targets agri-climate techs
Early stage tech-focused VC firm EchoVC has launched its new USD 2.5 million EchoVC Eco Pilot Fund I to support promising pre-seed start-ups in sectors such as climate, energy, agriculture and mobility. EchoVC focuses on investing in underrepresented founders and underserved markets. Through the fund, the VC wants to foster very-early-stage enterprise development and innovation with solutions that enable an income uplift for all the participants along the journey. The VC has so far invested in 36 start-ups across the world including in markets such as Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, South Africa and Pakistan. Investees comprise Pan-African payments company Cellulant and the no-longer operating Worldcover, a provider of crop insurance to farmers in the developing world.
05/12/23
Tomorrow.io and MTN partners for early warning systems in Africa
On the sidelines of COP 28 in Dubai, weather intelligence and climate adaptation company Tomorrow.io and African mobile operator group MTN have announced a partnership to provide early warnings and critical weather information to 300+ million people across Africa. The partnership is enabled by a Microsoft Azure technology grant from Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab. MTN’s customers will receive early warning notifications about severe weather events facilitating timely evacuations and preparedness actions. The partnership will leverage Tomorrow.io’s hyperlocal weather engine, which includes satellite data, generative-AI, and deep learning modelling capabilities, in conjunction with Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform, and MTN’s mobile network services. The partnership seeks to collaborate with national meteorological offices in participating countries to enable populations to also access critical weather information.
Photo credit: MTN Group
05/12/23
FAO gets $10M from US for soil fertility mapping
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has received an additional USD 10 million from the US Department of State to expand the FAO SoilFER project, which started in Honduras and Guatemala, to Ghana and Kenya. The project aims to map soil fertility and promote climate-smart agriculture and adaptation measures, resilient crops, fertiliser use efficiency and soil health. The funding is expected to strengthen smallholder production in these countries, mapping the soil needs, and providing technical assistance to farmers so they improve soil fertility through more efficient use of fertiliser and water. This will support climate-smart agricultural practices, soil health and the use of resilient crops as part of the Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils (VACS) Program. The funding comes amid increasingly prevalent food insecurity on the continent. Nearly one in four people in Africa (24%) faced severe food insecurity in 2022.
One that we missed..
22/11/23
OKO Insurance raises $250 K for B2B expansion into Africa
Agri-focused insurtech OKO Insurance has reportedly raised USD 250,000 in a seed round extension from Morgan Stanley. With this funding, the startup plans to pivot to a full B2B approach. Having started with a B2C model targeting farmers directly, and in light of the challenges associated with this business model, the company now plans to work directly with corporate entities such as agro-dealers, banks offering agri loans, NGOs and insurance agencies and brokers.
Incubated in 2018, OKO offers digitally enabled crop insurance via mobile phones, protecting smallholders from the consequences of drought and flood. OKO uses index-based insurance, meaning that claims are automatically validated and claimed if satellite data shows that weather conditions are detrimental to agricultural activities. In May this year, it renewed a partnership with multinational financial services company Allianz to underwrite and insure its crop insurance products as the insurtech expands into African markets.
To date, the startup has reportedly reached with its agri insurance products 27,000 farmers in Mali, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Mozambique. It is now also working in Angola, and South Africa. It aims to reach 1 million farms by 2027. OKO has to date raised USD 1.75 million.