Published 2 years ago on the GROW FOR ME organization's page
Grow For Me - Micro Aggregator Platform Impact
How many smallholder farmers have our company impacted so far?
We have impacted over 18,000 farmers and farm hands
Please find more details about our impact here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ZinFsHIorjOertAjYpK54yNNU4cMDiD…
How does our solution impact the revenue of these smallholder farmers?
Trade Revenue Impact on smallholder farmers for harvest/commodities.
The farmer sells his/her commodities (harvest) as his/her primary source of income. Their commodities are their monies, while warehouses are their banks. Our platform enables them to convert their commodities into cash by selling to Grow For Me at the best market price. We have weekly price review meetings that enable us to set the highest buying price for a farmers commodity on the market in all warehouses we operate. Current operation warehouses/areas can be found here: Commodity Aggregation Locations - https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1MsgqU3ueY_tDKNdSObFDiLPZOnku5u1v&hl=en&usp=sharing
Finally, by providing a ready market to the farmer through our Micro Aggregator platform, farmers can always sell their harvest and not leave anything to rot on the farm due to the lack of a ready market. Our target is to activate 95 warehouses in Ghana with USD $ 6 million and then scale into nine (9) other markets whose GDP is significantly impacted by Agriculture and commodity trading. The list of nine (9) other markets can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-6zGWDCwnGvrnVFLBx4q7qmkYYZF9v6UjbFRk-BRI08/edit?usp=sharing
Farm revenue Impact on smallholder farmers for crop production
Via our input financing and ready market structure, farmers are able to purchase their farm inputs before the season starts. This enables them to farm on time hence reducing potential losses due to late planting, fewer rains and pest infestation.
Secondly, through our remote satellite monitoring and onsite monitoring through the national extension officer network in each country, our farmers get the best of advice and guidance to ensure their farms get the highest yield.
What is our competitive advantage?
Our first competitive advantage is demonstrated in our Micro Aggregator Platform that runs on USSD. It requires just a cellular network connection to work, or smartphones required. Hence farmers who generally have feature phones are able to sell their commodities at the warehouse whenever they choose to. It provides constant liquidity.
Our second competitive advantage is our scalable technology that works across multiple countries via USSD. We are also the first company in West Africa to get approval from the Security Exchange Commission in Ghana to run a crowdfunding/commodity aggregation platform. This gives customers the comfort to the use of funds and trade information because of regulatory oversight.
Our final competitive advantage is the uniqueness of our model and technology, which enables Banks, High net-worth individuals, family offices, and regular income earners to participate in commodity financing and trading for a profit. The farmer now has access to an unlimited number of financiers.
Please find details competitive analysis of other Agtech startups can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1S3s5dSPieRmyfyMF8-B_yntf5SFlV-j2LRZUNAU5wVw/edit?usp=sharing