Agric-tech startup, WeFarm has secured £1.3m in seed funding. The peer-to-peer agtech network that enables small-scale farmers to access and share vital agricultural information even without internet, has also reached over 100,000 users.
The round is led by LocalGlobe, a UK-based venture capital firm focused on seed investing, whose other investments include Citymapper, Lovefilm, Moo, TweetDeck, TransferWise and Zoopla. The seed round will go towards bringing the benefits of WeFarm to thousands of new farmers.
WeFarm Founder & CEO, Kenny Ewan, said, “Connecting farmers to relevant advice from other farmers is a completely new approach. The majority of information delivered to people living in poverty is top-down, whereas we are using a crowdsourcing model to unlock generations worth of grassroots knowledge, ideas, and experience among farmers. This is why WeFarm has already secured more than 100,000 registered members in an industry where less than 0.1 % of mobile apps ever reach even half that number.”
LocalGlobe partner Saul Klein said, “WeFarm is building and empowering a community of farmers, dramatically improving their experience of obtaining advice. In doing so, WeFarm has created an SMS and web-based network that’s enjoying real user growth and engagement. We believe that this network, whether delivered on feature or smart phones, will, over time, become an important channel for farmers into the wider food supply chain. We are thrilled that WeFarm has reached over 100,000 users and look forward to working with Kenny and his team.”
Continued Ewan, “In five years time we want to connect 100 million small-scale farmers to our network. There is still massive global inequality around access to information, but by designing services for basic mobiles phones you can create social impact on an unprecedented scale as well as develop a highly profitable social business.”
WeFarm launched in 2015 and now boasts a community of over 100,000 farmers across Kenya, Uganda and Peru. This is an unprecedented rate of growth considering the ‘off-grid’ nature of their end users, and to date they have used the service a huge amount; sharing more than 15 million pieces of information.
In July, WeFarm won the second prize in the Chivas Regal “The Venture” competition for social enterprise and was awarded the second largest contribution from the fund, receiving $200,000.
