ThriveAgric - Agriculture Operating System

According to the MIT Solve Challenge, over 1.8 billion adults worldwide are unbanked or poorly served by existing financial products and services. In Nigeria, where ThriveAgric is based, more than 23 million smallholder farmers, who produce up to 80% of the food, struggle to access loan facilities, inputs, and markets. ThriveAgric's solution, the Agricultural Operating System (AOS), provides smallholder farmers with financing, index-based crop insurance, extension services, and linkage to markets for their produce. ThriveAgric is addressing the barriers to financial inclusion faced by smallholder farmers in Africa, including lack of access to credit, inputs, markets, information and technology, and excessive pre- and post-harvest losses. ThriveAgric's target market is smallholder farmers in Africa, who are often among the poorest in their communities. By addressing the financial exclusion of smallholder farmers in the agriculture sector, ThriveAgric is contributing to the development of Africa's agricultural value and supply chains and improving the livelihoods of smallholder farmers.

To illustrate the scale of the problem, it is estimated that more than 500 million smallholder farmers in Africa lack access to loan facilities from conventional banks. The agriculture sector in Africa is estimated to be worth $500 million and contributes 90% to the continent's GDP. ThriveAgric's AOS platform has served over 205,000 smallholder farmers and provided over $60 million in loans to these farmers. Tradr, ThriveAgric's digital marketplace for farmers and agri-traders, has served approximately 12,000 customers, 30% of whom are female. ThriveAgric's products and services aim to help smallholder farmers skip 4 to 6 layers of middlemen, enabling them to sell their produce to bigger markets and earn three times more income.
ThriveAgric's solution contributes to the MIT Solve Financial Inclusion Challenge by making it easier and more affordable for smallholder farmers to access financial services, inputs, and markets. ThriveAgric's AOS platform and Tradr app address the drivers of financial exclusion faced by smallholder farmers, including lack of access to formal ID, access to the internet and financial service agents, unclear explanations of product offerings, and discrimination, particularly against women, ethnic minorities, people of color, persons with disabilities, displaced communities, and low-income populations. ThriveAgric's solution provides equitable access to affordable financial services and technology-powered solutions, which can help increase access to appropriate services and create products, such as loans secured by digital collateral or weather-indexed microinsurance, that meet the financial needs of the unbanked and underbanked. 

ThriveAgric is a fast-growing technology-driven agricultural company that empowers smallholder farmers by providing financing, data-driven best practices, and access to local as well as global markets for commodities. Our flagship product, the Agricultural Operating System (AOS), consists of several apps, such as TMoni (spinning off as Crust), Tradr, and ODK, which serve as the backbone of ThriveAgric’s agricultural operations. On the AOS platform, farmers can access financing, index-based crop insurance, extension services, and markets for their produce. Tradr is a digital marketplace for farmers and agri-traders that reduces post-harvest loss and increases farmers' income. Tradr offers farmers access to input financing at competitive rates, input products & services, and helps them sell their produce to bigger markets, enabling them to earn three times more income. ThriveAgric's focus is on addressing the barriers that small-scale farmers face, including lack of access to credit, inputs, markets, information, and high pre- and post-harvest losses. ThriveAgric has onboarded over 205,000 farmers in Nigeria, disbursed over $60,300,000 to smallholder farmers, put over 127,000 ha under climate-smart agriculture, and produced over 643,400 MT of cereal grains.

ThriveAgric is a technology-driven agricultural company focused on improving the agriculture sector in Africa, providing financing, data-driven best practices, and access to local as well as global markets for commodities to smallholder farmers. The agriculture sector in Africa is facing constraints, including high levels of informality, poverty, low yields and productivity, a lack of inputs, and limited access to finance, among others. ThriveAgric addresses these challenges through its Agricultural Operating System (AOS), which consists of several apps that serve as the backbone of ThriveAgric’s agricultural operations. On the AOS platform, farmers are provided with financing, index-based crop insurance, extension services, and linkage to markets for their produce. ThriveAgric's solution serves smallholder farmers, who are the main producers of 98% of the food consumed in Africa. The barriers that smallholder farmers face include lack of access to credit, inputs, markets, information and technology, and excessive pre- and post-harvest losses. ThriveAgric's solution addresses those barriers by partnering with large agribusinesses that require high-quality cultivation of the cash crops they are buying, providing agricultural expertise combined with technology and rural distribution and agent networks to facilitate access to formal markets. Tradr app, one of ThriveAgric's products, provides a digital marketplace for farmers and agri-traders to interact and trade with agricultural supply players, reducing post-harvest loss and increasing farmers' income. Tradr solves four main challenges faced in agriculture: access to quality inputs, farm machinery, markets, and information. ThriveAgric's solution directly targets smallholder farmers and aims to improve their livelihood and economic outcomes by providing access to formal markets, improving productivity, and reducing post-harvest loss.

ThriveAgric is well-positioned to deliver this solution for financial inclusion. The company was founded in 2017 by Uka Eje and Ayodeji Arikawe to empower rural smallholder farmers in marginalized and poor communities in Africa. The founders have a background in agriculture and have worked on their own farm, experiencing first-hand the market-access challenge that other farmers face. ThriveAgric has since worked with over 205,000 smallholder farmers, provided $60 million in loans to these farmers, and partnered with over 25 strategic partners.
ThriveAgric's flagship product, the Agricultural Operating System (AOS), provides financing, index-based crop insurance, extension services, and linkage to markets for the produce of smallholder farmers. The AOS platform allows ThriveAgric to onboard farmers and provide them with the necessary services and training, including Good Agronomic Practices (GAP), to help them grow crops to the quality standards of their buyers. ThriveAgric also provides a digital marketplace for farmers and agri-traders to interact and trade with agricultural supply players, reducing post-harvest loss and increasing farmers' income. The Tradr app offers farmers access to input financing at competitive rates and input products and services. Through Tradr, farmers can sell their produce to bigger markets and earn three times more income.
ThriveAgric's solution addresses the drivers of financial exclusion in the agricultural sector, including lack of access to credit, inputs, and markets, and excessive pre- and post-harvest losses. With its experience and expertise in agriculture and technology, ThriveAgric is well-equipped to deliver this solution to smallholder farmers in marginalized and poor communities in Africa and help them gain access to formal markets and financial services.

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ThriveAgric is applying to MIT Solve to help them overcome specific barriers, leveraging more information about MIT Solve's challenge for financial inclusion. ThriveAgric recognizes that smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa face many obstacles, such as a lack of access to credit, inputs, markets, information and technology, and excessive pre- and post-harvest losses. ThriveAgric's Agricultural Operating System (AOS) provides financing, index-based crop insurance, extension services, and linkage to markets for smallholder farmers. To make this happen, ThriveAgric has developed a network of field agents who act as physical touchpoints for customer-facing services such as deposits, withdrawals, and bill payments. The company is also extending its services across the agriculture value chain with the provision of payment and management APIs and debit cards to other Agro platforms. ThriveAgric's goal is to empower rural smallholder farmers in marginalized and poor communities in Africa, by strengthening the foundation of Africa's agricultural value and supply chains, uniting wide-ranging partners within and into the agricultural value chain, creating an ecosystem that brings together financial services providers, input suppliers, insurance, transporters, mechanization, technology, smallholder farmers, and premium off-takers to build an Africa that feeds herself and the world. ThriveAgric has a proven track record of working with over 205,000 smallholder farmers and providing over $60 million in loans to these farmers. They are committed to creating programs and initiatives that drive toward the achievement of their SDG targets. ThriveAgric believes that MIT Solve can help them overcome the financial, technical, legal, cultural, or market barriers that they face. MIT Solve can help them to connect with partners who can help advance their solutions through monetary and/or non-monetary support. In addition to financial support, ThriveAgric is also looking for mentorship and technical assistance to help them scale their solution.

ThriveAgric's loan product design respects farmers’ cash flow cycle and market conditions, enabling them to tap into and reap the benefits of unmet demand for credit in rural areas. ThriveAgric's financing starts building up shortly before sowing and peaks at harvest time. After financed farmers harvest crops, they can sell them to ThriveAgric at pre-agreed prices to repay loans taken before the growing season. ThriveAgric's creative loan product design, long loan periods, flexible repayment schedules, and accessible repayment channels have led to high adoption rates and mitigating instances of misuse of loans. ThriveAgric is creating digital and economic identities to de-risk working rural smallholder farmers by generating data that can facilitate farmer credit scoring to create a pathway to financial inclusion for farmers. ThriveAgric provides farmers with a mobile money wallet linked to a bank account to make loan repayment easier and cheaper for the farmer, hence making collection easier for the lenders. ThriveAgric's data can lower the costs of client acquisition and due diligence in rural areas, and provide reliable, verifiable information about farmers and their farm production.

ThriveAgric's Agricultural Operating System (AOS) is an innovative platform consisting of several apps such as TMoni, Tradr, and ODK that serve as the backbone of ThriveAgric’s agricultural operations. On the AOS platform, ThriveAgric is able to onboard farmers and provide them with financing, index-based crop insurance, extension services, and linkage to markets for their produce, as part of a year-round out-grower scheme formed through multi-stakeholder partnerships with input companies, financiers, risk-takers, logistics companies, food processors and off-takers. ThriveAgric's balanced credit scoring model contains production history elements, transaction records, lifestyle-related demographics, agronomic quiz and survey data, and psychometric testing for insights on any loan applicant’s personality. ThriveAgric collects a variety of agriculture- and non-agriculture-related data using alternative sources to understand its customers and optimize its risk assessment process.
ThriveAgric is addressing the problem of financial inclusion for smallholder farmers in Africa. The agriculture sector in Africa is estimated to be worth $500 million and contributes 90% to the continent's GDP. The drivers of financial exclusion include lack of access to the internet and financial service agents, unclear explanations of product offerings, lack of formal ID, and discrimination, particularly against women, ethnic minorities, people of color, persons with disabilities, and low-income populations. With ThriveAgric's innovative approach to financing and data-driven best practices, the company is making it easier for smallholder farmers to access loans, inputs, markets, information, and technology, leading to improved productivity, reduced post-harvest losses, and sustainable impact on the livelihoods of smallholder farmers and the nation's economic outcomes. ThriveAgric's solution is innovative because it creates digital and economic identities for farmers, provides equitable access to affordable financial services, and promotes conservation and climate-smart agriculture within its network of farmers to improve productivity, make agriculture more resilient to climatic risks and less polluting, reduce the riskiness of clients in the agricultural sector, and provide mainstream financial institutions new opportunities for expansion into new, unserved or underserved rural areas.

ThriveAgric aims to onboard 500,000 users in the agriculture sector by the end of 2023, with the goal of increasing this number to 10 million farmers over the next three years. ThriveAgric also aims to increase the total value of credit disbursed to $500 million, be present in 10 countries, and have 1500 food off-takers. These targets are expected to result in revenue of $4.8 billion and the sale of 37 million metric tons of produce.

ThriveAgric also plans to scale up its operations in Nigeria from 2023 to 2027 by expanding its smallholder outgrower scheme in existing markets to cover new crop value chains - cocoa, oil palm, and rubber - with around 7.3 million farmers. In addition, the company plans to expand to more African countries to enjoy economies of scale, mitigate the risk associated with operating in a single country, and reap the returns on its investments. ThriveAgric has identified Kenya, Zambia, and Ghana as the first countries for expansion, and the company plans to replicate its successful model in these countries by targeting smallholder farmers and addressing the gap in smallholder financing, post-harvest losses, and market-linkage infrastructure and services.
ThriveAgric's Crust Bank is part of the company's strategic initiative to address the gaps in financial services for smallholder farmers in Africa, with the goal of providing financial services across the entire agriculture ecosystem to bank the entire sector. Crust's financial products include traditional bank accounts with debit cards, supported by a network of field agents who act as physical touchpoints for customer-facing services such as deposits, withdrawals, and bill payments. The company is also extending its services across the agriculture value chain with the provision of payment and management APIs and debit cards to other Agro platforms. ThriveAgric aims to scale up Crust Bank to help bank the entire agricultural value chain, bringing the company closer to its vision of building an Africa that can feed itself and the world.

ThriveAgric is measuring progress towards its impact goals using specific indicators such as the number of smallholder farmers accessing financing, the amount of financing provided to smallholder farmers, the increase in smallholder farmers' yields and productivity, the reduction in post-harvest losses, and the increase in smallholder farmers' participation in critical food markets. ThriveAgric collects data through various methods such as mobile app tools, surveys conducted through field staff, review of business records such as SMS and transaction logs, interviewing staff members, and generating internal reports. Thrive Agric’s Agricultural Operating System (AOS), which consists of both hardware components such as tablets, computers, and smartphones and software such as mobile apps, provides the backbone for the project operations. The technology auto-generates reports and dashboards for decision-making by project users such as Project Manager, Business Analyst, MEL Lead, Gender Specialist, and Communications Consultant. The data is stored and accessible online, and options to download them as spreadsheets, GIS, word, PDF or picture format are provided depending on the data requested. The data collected is protected from unauthorized access, accidental deletion, and malicious hacking attempts through security structures and protocols such as strong passwords, access rights assigned to pre-qualified staff members, approved security software and firewalls, and encrypted devices.

ThriveAgric's theory of change for the MIT Solve challenge on Financial Inclusion is to improve food security for marginalized and poor communities in Africa by providing financing, data-driven best practices, and access to local and global markets for commodities to smallholder farmers. ThriveAgric aims to strengthen the foundation of Africa's agricultural value and supply chains by uniting partners within the agricultural value chain to create an AgriTech ecosystem that brings together financial services providers, input suppliers, insurance, transporters, mechanization, technology, smallholder farmers, and premium off-takers to build an Africa that feeds itself and the world.

ThriveAgric's solution addresses the financial exclusion of smallholder farmers in Africa who do not have access to loan facilities from conventional banks due to the lack of financial identity and traceability, which makes them un-creditworthy. Through Crust Bank, which provides financial services across the agriculture ecosystem to bank the entire agriculture sector, ThriveAgric's target market is the agriculture sector in Africa, which is estimated to be worth $500 million and contributes 90% to the continent's GDP. The drivers of financial exclusion include lack of access to the internet and financial service agents, unclear explanations of product offerings, lack of formal ID, and discrimination, particularly against women, ethnic minorities, people of color, persons with disabilities, displaced communities, and low-income populations.
ThriveAgric aims to make transactions easier, protect against predatory debt, and increase the ability of individuals and MSMEs to take risks and build wealth by providing financing, data-driven best practices, and access to local and global markets for commodities to smallholder farmers. ThriveAgric's solution provides a tailored solution that gives equitable access to affordable financial services using technology and innovation to increase access to appropriate services as well as creating products, such as loans secured by digital collateral or weather-indexed microinsurance, that meet the financial needs of the unbanked and underbanked.
ThriveAgric's solution targets the over 23 million smallholder farmers in Nigeria who produce up to 80% of the food but are net buyers of food and very vulnerable to the fluctuations of the food market prices. They are among the poorest groups and barely participate in critical food markets, given that most of them grow for subsistence. By providing financing, data-driven best practices, and access to local and global markets for commodities to smallholder farmers, ThriveAgric aims to improve food security for marginalized and poor communities in Africa.

ThriveAgric's Agricultural Operating System (AOS) offers several apps such as TMoni, Tradr, and ODK that serve as the backbone of ThriveAgric's agricultural operations. On the AOS platform, ThriveAgric is able to onboard farmers and provide them with financing, index-based crop insurance, extension services, and linkage to markets for their produce, forming a year-round out-grower scheme through multi-stakeholder partnerships with input companies, financiers, risk-takers, logistics companies, food processors, and off-takers.

Tradr provides a digital marketplace for farmers and agri-traders to interact and trade with agricultural supply players, reducing post-harvest loss and increasing farmers' income. Tradr solves four main challenges faced in agriculture: access to quality inputs, farm machinery, markets, and information such as weather conditions and good agricultural practices. The platform is supported by Tradr agents who facilitate the movement of commodities and make it easier to deliver goods by grouping input providers and off-takers by location and region. Tradr's value proposition offers farmers access to input financing at competitive rates, input products and services, and helps them skip 4 to 6 layers of middlemen, enabling them to sell their produce to bigger markets and earn three times more income.

ThriveAgric's approach to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusivity is evident in its design and implementation of programs. The company recognizes the impact of gender roles and patterns in the communities in which it operates. Its innovative methods engage and empower female farmers to gain access to productive resources and achieve productivity gains. ThriveAgric targets to improve crop production among smallholder farmers to distribute women among potential beneficiaries fairly. The company is also addressing the issue of access to good quality farmland for smallholder farmers to ensure that women are not locked out of this opportunity. ThriveAgric also offers credit to farmers without making proof of land ownership a requirement. The company has budgeted to engage the services of a gender specialist to train staff members on gender intelligence and best practices and to review the program design implementation. ThriveAgric also integrates gender-sensitive monitoring and evaluation of the project to provide insights into the differential status of men and women customers and address gender dimensions in agriculture development.

In terms of the youth approach, ThriveAgric aims to promote equal opportunities for young men and women, emphasizing vulnerable groups such as rural populations. The company is making formal social protection schemes, such as pensions and health insurance, accessible to young workers, given their high participation rate in the informal economy and self-employment. ThriveAgric has also found that some operational tasks are more successful if completed by youth. The company uses alternative data, such as a person’s traits, to improve credit models and better serve the underbanked majority of youth. ThriveAgric also integrates age-disaggregated monitoring and evaluation of the company's activities to provide insights into the differential status of youth and adults. The company sensitizes staff members on youth and youth-related topics and integrates the youth metric on the staff key performance indicator metric. ThriveAgric also uplifts the youth to access transformative economic opportunities by lowering the barriers of entry such as collateral, credit history, and financial statements.
ThriveAgric's response to the MIT Solve question is to design tailor-made solutions that provide equitable access to affordable financial services. The company's business model formalizes and de-risks trade with and investments in smallholder farmers by formal institutions. ThriveAgric's approach to credit provision involves using alternative data such as psychometric tests to assess the creditworthiness of borrowers. The company uses non-financial data such as aspects of a borrower’s character traits such as responsibility and trustworthiness to predict a potential borrower’s willingness and ability to repay their loans. ThriveAgric also targets savings groups to provide flexible payment structures that are sold to members of savings groups. The company targets the youth and women with good agricultural practices capacity building to improve their productivity per hectare. ThriveAgric uses technology in all its operations, which the youth and women are more likely to adopt than their adult counterparts. Furthermore, ThriveAgric provides farmers with call center support and product fliers to help create product awareness and usage.

ThriveAgric's business model is centered around providing financing, data-driven best practices, and access to local and global markets for commodities to smallholder farmers in Africa. The company works with partners within the agricultural value chain to create an AgriTech ecosystem that brings together financial services providers, input suppliers, insurance, transporters, mechanization, technology, smallholder farmers, and premium off-takers to build an Africa that feeds herself and the world. ThriveAgric's flagship product, the Agricultural Operating System (AOS), serves as the backbone of the company's agricultural operations. The AOS platform allows ThriveAgric to onboard farmers and provide them with financing, index-based crop insurance, extension services, and linkage to markets for their produce, as part of a year-round out-grower scheme formed through multi-stakeholder partnerships with input companies, financiers, risk-takers, logistics companies, food processors, and off-takers. ThriveAgric has onboarded over 205,000 farmers across over 2,600 communities in Nigeria, disbursed over $60,300,0000 to smallholder farmers, put over 127,000 ha under climate-smart agriculture, and produced over 643,400 MT of cereal grains and established over 400 trading partnerships across Africa. ThriveAgric's solution addresses financial exclusion by providing smallholder farmers with access to formal markets and quality inputs, and linking them to buyers who require high-quality cultivation of the cash crops they are buying. The company's solutions provide equitable access to affordable financial services, which is a key driver of financial inclusion.

Our plan for becoming financially sustainable is to continue our current business model, which unites partners within the agricultural value chain to create an AgriTech ecosystem that brings together financial services providers, input suppliers, insurance, transporters, mechanization, technology, smallholder farmers, and premium off-takers. We will continue to provide financing, data-driven best practices, and access to local as well as global markets for commodities to smallholder farmers. We aim to build a digital marketplace for commodities trading across Africa, thereby reducing post-harvest loss and increasing farmers' income. This will enable us to generate more revenue through commission on the value of agricultural commodities sold. We will also continue to provide affordable index-based crop insurance to smallholder farmers, thereby increasing their ability to take risks and build wealth.

ThriveAgric’s Agricultural Operating System (AOS) technology combines with the agricultural expertise of our large agribusiness partners to facilitate credit and manage cash-crop supply chains. We have onboarded over 205,000 farmers across over 2,600 communities in Nigeria, disbursed over $60,300,000 to smallholder farmers, and put over 127,000 ha under climate-smart agriculture. We have produced over 643,400 MT of cereal grains and established over 400 trade relationships with off-takers. Our operational sustainability is demonstrated by our revenue generation through credit administration fees, commission on the value of agricultural commodities sold, and discounts received on the bulk purchase of agricultural inputs.