Hello Tractor

To address food security challenges across Africa, Hello Tractor seeks to accelerate smallholder farmers access to professional mechanization services. We will do this by supporting women credit cooperatives (WCC) to invest in owning tractors, delivering services to small farmers within our marketplace, and managed by Hello Tractor. WCCs will put 20% contribution per tractor investment with commercial bank and DFI partners financing the balance. Tractors being financed will come with a full book of pre-identified and preorganized farmers paying for tractor services within our marketplace. 

This approach is enabled by our industry leading technology, developed over 5 years of experience working with tractor contractors across Africa and Asia. Supporting the technology used in the scheme is tractor operators, trained by our tractor dealer partners, booking agents pre-identifying farmers willing and able to pay for tractor services, field technicians responsible for scheduled maintenance, and field managers managing the service delivery workflow.

Challenges in the African agriculture ecosystem around productivity and lost income are underpinned by lack of access to mechanization. Small farmers in the region plant late, under-cultivate, and lose income due to antiquated production practices. In fact, as much as 50% of Africa’s yield gap can be attributed to a lack of mechanization.

Additionally, youth employment is a pressing challenge throughout Africa. It is projected that around 100 million youth will enter the workforce in Africa with the majority finding work in agriculture. Innovations like ours that facilitate the provision of mechanization services leveraging ICTs are creating jobs for youth. Hello Tractor addresses both of these issues through our innovative tractor finance program.

Hello Tractor is accelerating smallholder farmers' access to professional mechanization services, thus improving farmer yields and income while generating meaningful business opportunities for rural entrepreneurs. This is enabled by our industry leading technology, developed over 5 years of experience working with tractor contractors across Africa and Asia.

Through our novel PAYG approach, we will be building on existing work by significantly increasing the number of tractors farmers across emerging markets have access to, which will drive down the cost of mechanization services and create jobs for youth and women not only serving as farmer demand aggregators (booking agents) but also as tractor contractors.

Hello Tractor's beneficiaries include:

Women Credit Cooperatives: Investors (mostly women as well as youth) investing 20% equity contribution to replace the need for a downpayment on financed tractors. These individuals are always looking for new investment opportunities especially those that will help build communities. Providing them with such investment opportunities will not only empower them, but will also help achieve some of the SDG goals.

Farmers: The innovation will make access to mechanization services easier and faster for small farmers who often struggle to gain access to tractors, allowing them plant 40 times faster at ⅓ the cost of conventional manual labor

Booking Agents: Young, tech savvy individuals who are jobless will be empowered with jobs to serve as demand aggregators for farmers within their communities and earn an income by so-doing.

Operators: Access to tractors to earn income while serving farming communities

OEMs & Dealers: Scalable approach to selling equipment into smallholder markets. 

Banks: Low risk loans to finance agricultural equipment in a controlled marketplace

Our solution is directly tied into providing access to inputs (tractors in our case) to facilitate improved yields and farm productivity for smallholder farmers. Most farmers across emerging markets, who are overwhelminglywomen, plant late, under-cultivate their land, and lose income due to antiquated production practices.

Our technology ensures that tractor supply meets farmer demand in a transparent and profitable exchange between contractors and low-income growers. By also creating jobs for youth serving as booking agents, we are able to educate farmers on best farm practices for increased yields and profits.

Hello Tractor is currently the only company designing technology specifically for the compact tractor segment, as larger players in the tractor space rely on expensive sensors and high priced software for high-horsepower tractors. We are taking this industry leading technology and the data that it produces to introduce financing to segments of the market traditionally lacking access. The combination of our technology, the data it generates, and our deep marketplace of farmers in need of tractor services, allows us to finance tractors with no down-payment and no collateral outside the tractor value.

Hello Tractor places GPS monitoring devices onto tractors and collects location, tractor usage, and tractor health data to ensure assets are performing and farmers are receiving the services they request on schedule and fraud is minimized. All data generated by the GPS monitoring device is fed to the HT tractor owner app and HT booking app. This enables us to reach:

Tractor Owners: They are able to view their tractor data on the Tractor Owner app allowing them to manage tractor fleets, review operator performance, monitor maintenance needs, and access incoming service requests from booking agents.

Booking Agents: Our Booking Agent app allows booking agents to organize and schedule services between tractor owners and smallholder farmers, as well as measure and input farm sizes and location and store farmer credentials. Once a booking agent submits a request, the platform routes it directly to an available tractor owner nearby with the applicable implement to service the job. 

Farmers: Hello Tractor aggregates smallholder farmers’ requests for tractor service on behalf of tractor owners, while providing enhanced security through remote asset tracking and virtual monitoring. This allows tractor owners and manufacturers to expand their markets, reaching new customers who were previously inaccessible.

Lastly, Hello Tractor has partnered with IBM to build an operations center app that helps de-risk tractor management and tractor finance by assessing projected debt repayments on an individual tractor and project seasonal cash flow and revenue potential for the tractor.

Hello Tractor has emerged as the leading provider of technology solutions designed for the tractor services market. To date, we have not only been able to grow the number of tractors on our platform across 13 markets, managing assets worth over $75M, but have also been able to service 500k+ hectares of land across these markets, bringing more land under cultivation through mechanization to support global food security. Through our work, we are addressing the need for consistent and sustainable tractor service delivery for smallholder farmers, while ensuring the profitability of tractors providing the services.

Hello Tractor has already achieved milestones that indicates market demand and interest from partners and investors including:

• 3,000+ tractors installed on our platform

• Strategic partnerships with John Deere and IBM on large public and private sector projects as well as our Agwallet platform based on Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence, respectively.

• Supply Chain partnerships with John Deere, Calamp, and AGCO, Tafe, and TATA

• Partnerships with Aeris on advanced machine learning, connectivity, and joint sales and go to market strategy

• 500k farmers lives touched by our connected fleet

• Scaling into 12 countries across Africa & Asia

• Press from major outlets, including Inc. Magazine, Reuters, Fast Company, Forbes, BBC, The Economist, White House, CNBC, CNN, and Washington Post.

This innovation is anticipated to significantly disrupt the agricultural sector across emerging markets by enabling an increase in agricultural productivity across these markets and allowing maximum yields to be reached for a more food-secure world. We are accomplishing this by leveraging on market forces and crowding in new capital that traditionally has been on the sidelines of agricultural investing in Africa. The result of these investments will be a reinforcing ecosystem of farmers willing and able to pay for tractor services and tractor owners delivering these services, with financial investment coming from both local and international sources.

Our technology has already made it possible for tractor owners to increase the size of their tractor fleet, resulting in more smallholder farmers across the country being served. Additionally, tractor owners allow their machines to roam the country in search of demand instead of keeping their tractor close to home base for fear of fraud and lack of trust with their operators. By providing products and services to support the supply and demand-side of the market, we are introducing efficiency into the mechanization ecosystem and reducing the cost of service delivery. 

Insights from the Field: Independent Customer Survey Implemented by Lean Data: 

• Farmers value that Hello Tractor is easy to use, and that the quality of tilling work is high. Most customers rated quality of tilling work at Hello Tractor 5 / 5.

• Nearly 95 % of customers said their quality of life has improved to some extent as a result of access to Hello Tractor tractor services, and cite productivity and income increases as the reasons behind their answer. Separately, 94% of customers report an increase in productivity, saying they experienced better harvests and the ability to plant on more land. 

• Only 13% of customers had prior access to tractors before working with Hello Tractor and that 95% of all farmers used Hello Tractor services to facilitate their top income source. This appears to indicate that there is a unique value-add of Hello Tractor to customers: they value mechanization services, but previously had low, or no, access to them.

Since our business model pivot in 2017, Hello Tractor has been able to capture 80% of all commercial tractors sold into Nigeria and scale into 15 additional markets. We have over 3,000 tractors and 1220 booking agents on our platform; our impact has reached over 500,000 smallholder farmers to date through these tractor services.

Our immediate goal for the next year is to have provided services to 1,000,000 farmers through an anticipated 2,000 tractors we would have onboarded on our platform.

Due to our success in supporting the tractor contractor ecosystem, Hello Tractor has been able to form strategic partnerships with John Deere, after an extensive due diligence process. After their deep review of Hello Tractor and the success generated by tractor owners across our platform, John Deere’s executive team made the decision to utilize Hello Tractor’s technology to increase the number of tractors across Africa by committing over $200M dollars of investment capital, through John Deere Financial, to support commercial tractor service providers using Hello Tractor’s technology. We have also been able to unlock partnerships with other tractor manufacturers such as Kubota in Thailand and look to further build on this momentum as we scale.

Over the next five years, we intend to position ourselves as the leading telematics solution provider for sub-100HP tractors globally. To do this, we have set the following business and impact goals:

• Build Market Leading Technologies and Products: We started off by launching the first version of our technology (Hello Tractor Version 1.0) which was a big learning opportunity for us and provided a clear picture of what fixes were needed to address customer needs. We recently launched a new version of our technology which not only addresses the majority of our customers’ core needs but also addresses larger market concerns which has helped increase our relevance and value among stakeholders in the value chain.

• Expand to 15+ New Markets: We have been quite successful in our operations within Nigeria and are excited to take our solution across to other sub-Saharan Africa and Asian markets. We intend to penetrate into, and properly establish ourselves within the following other markets over the next 5 years:  Bangladesh, Tanzania, Nepal, India, China, and Indonesia. 

• Achieve impact target of 10 million farmers reached:

Despite the negative impact of COVID19, we expect that by the end of 2020, we will have achieved more than 4,000 tractors on our platform across our three core markets and the select expansionary markets that we are targeting. By the end of 2024, we expect to fully have more than 100,000 active tractors on the platform with more than 10 million farmers served.

For the next year, we have identified the following as potential barriers that we may face even as we continue to scale up:

• Operating: Operating costs could exceed budgeted allocations; Leadership team may not be equipped to deliver success

• Technology: Competing product development on time and within budget is key to our credibility; Less than optimal technology may be developed; competitors could leapfrog us in key market; mobile carriers could pull out of key markets

• Capability: Scaling capabilities quickly are key to growth and we may be slow

Over the next 5 years, barriers we are likely to encounter include:

• Economic: External economic forces drive private and public sector agricultural investment and financial firm participation

• Legislative and Policy: Regulations could change and pose a negative impact to our current and future operations

• Funding: We need funding to be available at a level and timing required for success

• Supply side: Actual market demand for our product may not yield projected sales volumes

• Reputational: Highly visible potential missteps could negatively impact our ability to grow

For the next one year,

• Operating: Enhancing internal controls, developing active forecasts for monthly and quarterly key investment needs, and hiring a financial/accounting staff are key levers to better understand our OPEX and cost realities. 

• Technology: We are using software project management tools like Slack & Mechanical Turk to ensure we deliver superior training to internal staff and generate the feedback needed to turn field insights into technology development quickly. 

• Capability: We are filling out our team increasingly with personnel with analogous experience. Receiving funding is key to being able to attract the type of talent that can enhance our internal practices and prepare us for future growth

For the next five years,

• Economic: Hello Tractor targets customers and partners with firm, organized, and professional management teams. We look to spend a considerable amount of our resources working with relatively established, stable organizations like Deere (OEM), TATA (dealer), and the World Bank (financing). By being smart about the relationships we have in place and working with some of the more capitalized players in the industry, we minimize risk.

• Funding: Hello Tractor anticipates building a growth model that can attract venture capital to the company. Over the next 5 years, we will go to the markets at least twice, seeking to raise $12 million in funding. 

• Supply side: Africa is a growth market and we are committed to its development. But we would also be making strategic bets to sell solutions in large volume markets like those in South Asia.

Hello Tractor currently employs 22 individuals full-time with technical expertise across agriculture, hardware engineering and telemetry, software engineering, data science, sales, and customer relationship management. We also have two advisory board members - Abe Hughes (General Manager, Agriculture Division, Trimble) & Harry Plant (VP Social Impact, Aeris) - seasoned professionals who provide advice to our management team.

Hello Tractor prioritizes talent of the highest caliber from the markets served. Our team believes in our mission and strives to empower communities to create shared benefits and transform the agricultural ecosystem, creating efficiencies that generate inclusive growth, reduce poverty, and help build stronger, more stable economies.

Our CEO, Jehiel Oliver, leads the team, strategy, and partnerships. He was an advisor to two sitting U.S. presidents on business in Africa and has worked in global finance and agriculture for over a decade. He has worked as a financial sector consultant, providing advisory services for transactions totaling over a half billion dollars, in over ten countries, including conflict zones.  Jehiel began his career in the US investment banking and private equity and studied economics at Florida A&M University and Cornell University.

Hello Tractor has cultivated strategic, cross-sector partnerships that aid our ability to scale. Hello Tractor is already partnered with Aeris, the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, CalAmp, John Deere and IBM. 

• Development Finance Institutions - We’ve seen firsthand that bilateral and multilateral engagement provides critical funding and serves as an important screening function for government related projects. Over the past two years, Hello Tractor has been in discussion with the World Bank regarding its FADAMA project and was just recently brought onboard as a partner. 

• Agriculture industry stakeholders -  Input providers represent an attractive market   opportunity for us to engage farmers, create new revenue opportunities, and bolster our agents’ product offerings. In turn, by our platform can provide these companies with critical data on input usage at the farmer level.

• Foundations and NGOs - Hello Tractor has worked extensively with philanthropic partners to engage/train booking agents and to link our tractor owners to coordinated farmer groups/cooperatives. We have a number of NGO partners across each market that we are operating whom we would consider prospective partners.

Hello Tractor seeks to create holistic solutions for the market and high-quality customer experiences, while differentiating on simplicity, design, and our focus on adaptability. Our solution cuts across the following customer segments:

Smallholder Farmers: The target smallholder farmer customers are farmers who, on average, have less than 5 hectares of farmland. These farmers plant late, under-cultivate their land, and lose out on much-needed income. While these farmers are unable to purchase their own tractor, they do have the means to pay for mechanization services. By accessing our services, they are able to plant 40x faster at 1/3rd the cost

Booking Agents: Our commission-based booking agents, primarily young people from rural farming communities, perform critical market-aggregation, ensuring idle tractors can connect to farmers desperately in need of service, all while earning a sustainable livelihood they otherwise may not be able to access. We target active, commission-based booking agents to be trained and closely supported by Hello Tractor under this program. As bookings are entered into the system, our technology aggregates them into groups profitable for tractor owners to service. 

Mechanization Service Providers: Our service providers are contractors that purchase our IoT devices which are fitted to their tractors to enable them monitor their assets and  receive smallholder farmer service requests. Hello Tractor targets contractors who have achieved scale or are building with scale in mind. While these contractors may differ in size, experience, geographic area of focus, brand affinity, and services offered, all are highly cost conscious.

Solve brings us an opportunity to not only connect with other innovators doing important work to support global agricultural sustainability, but to also potentially raise funding to fuel some of our activities to engage more youth & women as tractor contractors & booking agents across emerging markets. These activities include capacity building training for on-boarded youths, provision of branded materials such as t-shirts, hats, ID cards, fliers etc, to them to support their work promoting mechanized farming to smallholder farmers, mechanization service demos for smallholder farmers to help them see firsthand how tractors are a better option than manual labor in that they save time & money while increasing productivity on the farm as well as identifying and financing potential tractor contractors amongst the youths.

In addition, we intend to leverage Solve's community of technology experts who can provide insights on how we can better utilize data we collect to provide more value to smallholder farmers and tractor owners in our network.

We have identified the following kind of organizations as critical to our growth and success as a company:

• Development Finance Institutions

• Agriculture Industry stakeholders

• Food and Beverage Companies

• Foundations and NGOs

We believe that using a collaborative approach, which takes into account the resources and expertise of established partners, will enable our company to grow efficiently and effectively, driving sustainable impact for all of our stakeholders.

Hello Tractor's core work is focused across rural farming communities where small farmers, who are overwhelmingly women, plant late, under-cultivate, and lose income due to antiquated production practices. By introducing mechanization to these communities, we are impacting the lives of thousands of smallholder farmers, enabling them to save an estimated $125 on land preparation activities, increasing their efficiency and productivity, improving their yields and freeing up household labor and making it easier for children in these households to go to school.

Hence, the Innovation for Women Prize will enable us do more by recruiting more women to serve as tractor contractors and booking agents for female farmers within their communities, hereby bridging the gender inequalities that we tend to find in many rural farming areas.