Pearl Farm app

Growing your income by 30% through farming online

There are over 500 million small holder farmer households worldwide living on less than 1 dollar and and 1 meal  a day according to world bank. In Uganda, 85% of the farming sector are small holders. These a largely poor people in rural areas who depend on farming and have limited access to capital and resources to afford yield enhancing farm inputs. This leads to the practice of crude farming practices and finally low harvest hence fostering food shortage and a viscous cycle of poverty. Small holder farmers being the main producers of the food that feeds the nation, this brings worry on how we shall feed this fast growing population.

Pearl Farm provides an online digital farming platform connecting Ugandan small holder farmers to local investors for increased crop yields. Through our application, people love to grow their income and those who love to farm but lacks time of going to the garden provides capital to small holder farmers to expand there harvest and in return gets a share of their profit, this helps smallholder farmers to expand food production and make more money for them and their investors. In our modal,we locate farmers who have arable land to cultivate but lacks capital and get their details like acreage, crop, budget and expected return. We upload this information on our mobile application where interested investors sign up. Once the investor is got, Pearl farm team provides this capital supports the farmer with training and guidance through the growing process till harvesting where the profit shares are divided between the farmer, investor and pearl farm at 50:30:20 ratio respectively after deducting the investors capital. When small holder farmer have access to capital and resources they able to afford high yielding farm inputs, expand harvest and produce more food to feed their families and the growing country population hence overcoming food shortage and poverty.

We are the first Agritech  initiative in East Africa to provide an online farming platform that enables anyone to participate in farming at just a touch of a button. Our solution is developed on a community modal where working class Ugandans supports Ugandan smallholder farmers to grow Ugandan food to feed Ugandan people. These kind of collaborations have been traditionally practiced by in the past however we are improving these them by making them accessible to new participants using an online application and providing transparency and security.

We are using Internet of Things(IoT) through developing an online application to bring the farming experience online. Users downloads our app from play store and signs up to farm online by selecting the farmer and the crop of their interest depending on the expected return. Online farmers gets progress of their virtual garden through emails, photos and videos and after harvesting, the produce is sold and the investors receive back their capital plus the pre-agreed profit margin via bank transfer. The whole process happens online and there is no need of physical contact between the farmer and the investor.

We are currently connecting farmer to investors by approaching interested investors face to face which adds on our operating costs however in two years time we want to have our mobile application developed where online farmers signs up online via mobile, this will enable reach more online farmers with limited costs.  We also want to have extended our solution beyond Mpigi district to the near by districts and made over 500 investor - farmer connections in Uganda  and in two years we want to have raised a gross profit of Ugx 100 million from commissions from the farmer investor connections.

We started in Mpigi district in Uganda and have impacted lives of a number of smallholder farmers and support farmer investors grow their income through investing into the farmers. In three year we want to have made over 5000 farmer- investor connections and to have scale to other parts of Uganda to expand the same impact the and in five years we plan to have reached most the smallholders in Uganda and to extend our service to the neighboring East African agricultural countries.  

For smallholder farmers in Uganda have limited access to technology and Internet therefore we reach out to these farmers through farmers associations and groups and gather their details which we upload on our app to match them with interested investors. For the investors these are working class people especially in urban areas who earns a reasonable income but lacks time for farming and these access our service through our mobile application. Once installed,online farmers sign up online and wait for profit after harvest.

We are currently serving 85 farmers and 20 investors. The investors provides capital to the smallholder farmers and we provide this capital plus training to the farmer to have good yields. We get farmers details and match them interested investors. Once we get an investor, farmers are provided with quality farm inputs like seeds,fertilizers, chicks, pesticides and together with training,they able to expand their harvest by 80% and can get food and an income enough make them excited. Investor are able expand their income by 30% and can decide to sponsor multiple farmers if they need to have more profit. 

In the next 12 months we want to be serving 500 smallholder farmers in rural areas being connected to investors and to expand crop production for food and income. We plan to develop our app where online farmers will be signing up and to reach over 300 online farmer/investors in the next 12 months. In tree year, we want to have made over 5000 farmer-investor connections and to have scaled our services to other parts of Uganda and also extended our services to the neighboring countries. This will be accelerated by our App to reach more investors with less resources.

We are three co-founders who are youth and enthusiastic entrepreneurs, Julius Bataire a former student at  Kampala international university in Business administration, Naluyima Shamim and Namara Georgia both Makerere university graduates in Marketing and Agriculture economics respectively. Having grown up in farming families gave us experience in agribusiness. We leverage our  professions to fulfill our responsibilities and  run the enterprise. Julius Bataire supports the project in product development, Naluyima Shamim handles marketing and Namara Goergia handles the project financials and agriculture economics. We believe the team has expertise and to run the enterprise

We make money through getting commissions from farmer investor connections we make. When a farmer gets an investor and expands their harvest, the profit after deducting the investors capital is devided into a 50:30:20 ratio between the farmer, investor and us(pearl Farm)

We get 20% profit share from each each farmers harvest as commissions and the more farmer-investor connection the more money we make. We use this money to scale up our services.

Solve will help us get access to a one year mentoring program to improve on our entrepreneurial understanding and our initiative structure and modal from the mentoring feedback. Will also help us to get an opportunity to meet other young entrepreneurs and talents whom we can share experience, ideas and discuss on possible synergies and collaborations. The award will also enable us to access funding that will be helpful in scaling our initiative. 

Our main challenge is lack of personnel in our team with expertise in soft ware development to support the project in developing our app therefore solve can help through connecting us to soft ware developers to develop our ICT infrastructure. We also have limited funds to execute our work and scale up and Solve can connect us to investors either equity or social impact.