Farmcrowdy, a one-year old agribusiness startup, has received $1 million in seed funding from investors including Techstars Ventures, Cox Enterprises and Social Capital. Launched in Nov. 2016, the startup has steadily gained traction and international interest: in August, Farmcrowdy became the first African startup accepted into Techstars Atlanta’s accelerator program.
You will remember that FarmCrowdy was the first and only African startup to be shortlisted into Techstars Atlanta’s accelerator programme in August. So it comes as so surprise that the managing directors of Techstars Atlanta, Tyler Scriven and Michael Cohn are also angel investors in the new seed round.
Founded by Onyeka Akumah (CEO), FarmCrowdy enables working class Nigerians to crowd-sponsor farming projects with the promise of a share in the returns. They can do this via the online platform or a recently launched app
“the seed fund will allow the award-winning startup to scale its operations with plans to expand into a combined 20 states in Nigeria, work with 4,000 additional small-scale farmers and engage a combined 20,000 new farm followers and farm sponsors on it’s platform to learn about the opportunities in Agriculture and partner with farmers.”
The startup’s crowdfarming model allows Nigerians sponsor existing farms (crops include cassava, maize, rice and soya beans) for between $260 and $790. In return, upon harvest, farm sponsors earn between 9% and 25% profit on their initial investment.
So far, the startup claims to have recorded over 1,000 unique farm sponsors — from Nigerians in Nigeria, the US and UK — an aggregated a combined 4,000 acres of farmland across 8 states in Nigeria and worked with more than 2,000 small scale farmers.