Digishop marketplace for farmers

I grew up in rural eastern Kenya and upon completing education with an MBA degree in Marketing and management in 2016 and also armed with experience in marketing, demand generation, business development and brand positioning having worked with big brands in the region like CocaCola and Colgate Palmolive, i was sure it was the right moment to design a solution to address challenges facing farmers in my community. My first business venture was water melon and tomato farming which actually made losses. It failed because it was hard to get right inputs, services, and information at local shops. I imagined same experience facing rural farmers every day. Looking at how agro dealer shops were managed I saw an opportunity to transform farming through changing how rural farmers access key inputs, services and information through starting Farmers Pride

Distribution of agriculture inputs and services is poor, inefficient and unreliable and dominated by poor quality seeds, counterfeit seeds and agrochemicals, poor input stock management, unaccredited agrodealers, poor farming technologies, poor post-harvest management and poor market intelligence to inform farming decisions. 

Covid-19 disruption on traditional delivery of farmer solutions has affected traditional farmer education channels and lastmile delivery of agriculture inputs and services . Majority of rural farmers depend on agrodealer stores to access inputs and services. These stores face numerous challenges ranging from record keeping to sourcing inputs and now with COVID-19 regulations on stay home and social distancing they are faced with eminent collapse as they lack alternative platforms to continue trading and continue educating farmers. Solving these problems for agrodealers makes them more resilient and able to offer improved services to their farmers and gives them a lifeline to continue trading

There are over 12,000 village level informal agrodealer stores across Kenya 60% owned by women entrepreneurs each servicing on average 500 farmers monthly bringing the total number of farmers serviced through these stores to over 6M. The village agrodealer stores offer a complex mix of inputs like seeds, fertilizers, agrochemicals, farm tools, animal feeds and vegetable seeds each of these sourced from scattered suppliers located several kilometers away with little or no trace-ability thereby no guaranteed quality. In addition the stores don’t keep records and have little or no capacity to offer key services like soil testing, extension services, farmer education among other key agriculture services. These stores face numerous challenges ranging from lack of information, distribution, access to counterfeit products, capital and management where farmers end up purchasing poor quality products at exploitative prices with limited or no extension and education support. Modernizing these stores through digitization of their operations, professionalizing operations, breaking last mile supply chain barriers and giving them digital tools to offer extension services to their customers massively translates to local farming communities accessing better quality and affordable agriculture services, inputs and information.

Farmers Pride is a one stop online-to-offline DigiShop® marketplace platform that connects village level farmers to relevant information, quality inputs and credible agriculture service providers in local community to ensure sustainable farm production, increased income opportunities and mitigate climate change. Our DigiShop platform creates new agriculture opportunities to village level farmers to access trusted and dependable information, inputs and services to succeed in their farming enterprises. Farmers Pride beneficiaries are village level farmers who majority are women and the business by choice strategically focuses on creating more wealth and income opportunities to village women and farmers through micro franchising DigiShop platform to rural women entrepreneurs. Farmers Pride targets village level agriculture stores and converts them to join DigiShop network. The transformation journey involves professionalizing how the stores are managed to offer a uniform Farmers Pride brand identify as well as digitizing operation to improve efficiency and service to local customers. We have developed an internal agrodealer recruitment and scoring tool that we continuously administer during the recruitment process to ensure quality candidates are onboarded. The recruitment process involves screening, mentoring and eventually launch where converted stores join Farmers Pride network.  

Farmers pride customers are Agro-dealers whose ultimate customers are farmers who are low-income, rural families that rely on mixed farming for their livelihood. Majority of these farmers are serviced by these village level agro-dealer informal stores. These stores face numerous challenges ranging from record keeping, exploitative pricing, distribution, access to counterfeit products, capital and management where farmers end up purchasing poor quality products at exploitative prices with limited or no extension and education support. Transforming these stores through digitization of their operations and professionalizing operations as well as solving last mile distribution challenges ultimately leads to local smallholder farmers accessing improved services, quality inputs, services and information at more affordable prices to succeed in their farming ventures. Digitization and professionalizing the village stores involves DigiShop technology to help them in sales and inventory management as well as keep customer and financial records to track their businesses and make better financial and inventory purchase decisions. DigiShop technology also helps the DigiShops and farmers they serve connect easily to credible agriculture service providers like agronomists, vets in local area and platform to request other services like insurance and soil testing thereby solving  credible extension and services access challenge. 

Traditionally farmers have been educated and trained through demonstration farms and group gatherings as well as access inputs trough visiting nearest agrodealer stores. There are over 12,000 of these stores spread across Kenya cumulatively servicing over 6m rural farmers. Increased Covid-19 social distancing regulations is significantly affecting normal operation of these stores as well as how smallholder farmers access inputs, services and information.We belief that traditional delivery of agriculture solutions is not sustainable and hence Farmers Pride is pioneering digital driven farmer education as well as improving capacity of village level agrodealer stores to continue trading and running sustainable businesses

Samuel grew up in rural eastern Kenya and upon completing education with an MBA degree in Marketing and management in 2016 and also armed with experience in marketing, demand generation, business development and brand positioning having worked with big brands in the region like CocaCola and Colgate Palmolive, he was sure it was the right moment to design a solution to address challenges facing farmers in his community. Samuel first business venture was water melon and tomato farming which actually made losses. It failed because it was hard to get right inputs, services, and information at local shops. Samuel imagined same experience facing rural farmers every day. ‘’Looking at how agro dealer shops were managed I saw an opportunity to transform farming through changing how rural farmers access key inputs, services and information;-samuel

I grew up in a rural farming community and was always passionate about about contributing to solving massive challenges facing smallholder farmers

Farmers Pride has a fantastic experienced and skillful team set to deliver solution to farmers

1. Samuel Munguti, Founder and CEO : 10+ years of experience in agribusiness development, management and designing solutions to farmer challenges in East Africa. MBA in Marketing and strategic management .Worked with CocaCola, Colgate Palmoliive, Loreal prior to founding Farmers Pride.
2. Nancy Matuku- Co Founder and Head of business development : 10+ years of experience in entrepreneurship, agriculture inputs sales and marketing
3. Gladys Wanjiru-Head of ICT and Accounts : 7 years’ experience in tech solutions development .Bachelor of Commerce degree in Accounts and ICT
4. Joel Patenaude -leads Strategy and partnerships .Experience in consulting with startups 

My first business venture was water melon and tomato farming which actually made losses. It failed because it was hard to get right inputs, services, and information at local shops. I imagined same experience facing rural farmers every day. Looking at how agro dealer shops were managed I saw an opportunity to transform farming through changing how rural farmers access key inputs, services and information and make them successful to avoid failure like myself

Samuel grew up in rural eastern Kenya and upon completing education with an MBA degree in Marketing and management in 2016 and also armed with experience in marketing, demand generation, business development and brand positioning having worked with big brands in the region like CocaCola and Colgate Palmolive, he was sure it was the right moment to design a solution to address challenges facing farmers in his community. Samuel first business venture was water melon and tomato farming which actually made losses. It failed because it was hard to get right inputs, services, and information at local shops. Samuel imagined same experience facing rural farmers every day. ‘’Looking at how agro dealer shops were managed I saw an opportunity to transform farming through changing how rural farmers access key inputs, services and information;-samuel

Farmers Pride offers a unique platform for distribution of agriculture inputs like certified drought tolerant green gram seeds and Sorghum seeds bundled with right agrochemicals, fertilizers and agronomy training and extension. We believe that traditional delivery of agriculture solutions is inefficient resulting to low productivity. We are leveraging on franchising and digital technology to break last mile agriculture solutions distribution barriers while facilitating our customers with climate information and climate smart practices to cushion them from impact of climate change. We are building a one-stop online-to-offline marketplace platform where rural farmers can access right  certified seeds, fertilizers, climate information and right training and extension. We have trademarked this solution Digi-Shop

Farmers Pride customers are low-income, rural families that rely on mixed farming for their livelihood. Majority of these farmers are serviced by village level agro-dealer informal stores. These stores face numerous challenges ranging from exploitative pricing, distribution, access to counterfeit products, capital and management where farmers end up purchasing poor quality products at exploitative prices with limited or no extension and training support. Modernizing these stores through digitization of their operations and professionalizing operations as well as solving last mile distribution challenges leads to local farming communities accessing better service, quality inputs, services and information at more affordable prices

Currently serving 11,000 farmers directly and targeting to reach 20,000 by next one year and 1m next 5 years

Through our DigiShop network we are targeting to serve directly 20,000 farmers with network of 30 DigiShops next one year impacting them with increased farm productivity and family income and 1m farmers wiyh nextwork of 500 DigiShops next 5 years spread across East, West and Central africa

Delayed funding targets

Actively fundraising to meet set funding targets

We are currently partnering with locl county goverbnments in Kenya and M-Shamba who offer farmers market linkage and Acre Africa who offer inputs insurance to farmers

Farmers Pride provides a one-stop last mile online-to-offline marketplace Digi-Shop platform to connect village level Farmers to relevant information, quality inputs and credible agriculture service providers in local community to ensure sustainable farm Production and mitigate effects of climate change. Our Digi-Shop platform creates new agriculture opportunities to Village level farmers to access trusted and dependable information (weather, financial and insurance services), inputs and extension Services to succeed in their farming enterprises. Farmers Pride business ensures right inputs, services and information reach to rural farming communities through Digi-Shop platform. More vital climate and weather Information produced by Kenya Meteorological department and other scientific Meteorological centers are interpreted and disseminated to village level farming communities through Digi-Shop platform and bundled with best practice agronomy and climate smart agriculture training.

Currently 60% of expenses supported by sales revenues and 40% grant funding. Prize funding will support Farmers Pride path to scale to become commercially sustainable while integrating climate smart agriculture practices and reach additional 20,000 farmers with 50 extra Digi-Shops next 24 months before rapid expansion supported by internal business revenues to  1000 Digi-Shops across Kenya reaching directly 500,000 farmers next six years through replicating lessons and best practices learned during the intervention period. This expansion will see Farmers Pride revenues triple, help build a pool of empowered farmers which translate to more successful stores registering high inputs and services sales in the network.

We registered USD 425k sales revenues in 2019.Our historical todate funding history-grant from Kenya markets Trust in 2016 for initial business launch and Phase 1 pilot,   USD 20k grant D-prize global distribution challenge award in 2018, Winner Global Next Gen Franchising competition organized by International Franchising Association(USA)-non monetory 2019, Semi finalist Nestle Creating shared value Prize 2018-non monetory, grant in 2018 from Climate information prize to test and launch Digishop technology platform and support climate information sharing and Active Grant of USD 45K running Jan-Dec 2020 from World Bank Group to support farmer education and inputs access

Raising USD 1m. USD 700K equity and 300k grant. Targeting to close next 6 months

USD 250,000