Kenyan mobile telecoms company, Safaricom has announced that it invested an undisclosed amount in Kenyan Startup, FarmDrive through Spark Venture Fund. The investment is in the form of convertible notes.
FarmDrive uses mobile phones, alternative data, and machine learning to close the critical data gap that prevents financial institutions from lending to creditworthy smallholder farmers. It analyzes income streams, expenses and crop yields and assigns farmers a credit score.
FarmDrive’s alternative credit risk assessment model provides financial institutions with an agriculturally relevant and data-driven model to assess risk and develop loans that fit the needs of smallholder farmers. Not only does this solution unlock millions of dollars of previously risk-averse capital for smallholder farmers, it improves the livelihoods of entire communities, thereby alleviating poverty, hunger, and inequalities.
FarmDrive says it will use the funds to improve its credit scoring tools and to enrol more farmers.
According to FarmDrive co-founder Rita Kimani; “That money and the additional capital that we’ve raised is really going into further product development. We need much more data for us to build a scalable model with very high predictive power.”
Rita Kimani and Peris Bosire founded FarmDrive in 2014.
With this investment in FarmDrive, Safaricom is close to depleting the Spark Venture Fund. Last year, the telco said it had invested $800,000 on four startups – Sendy, Eneza, Lynk and mSurvey. It added that it will sign an agreement with the sixth and final recipient of the Spark Fund capital within the next two months.
