Kenyan agriculture technology startup, Shamba Pride, has announced that it has secured the sum of $3.7 million in a debt-equity pre-series A funding round, to expand its merchant network.
The funding round saw investment from EDFI AgriFI (the EU Agriculture Financing Initiative) and Seedstars Africa Ventures. The investment is broken down to a $2 million long-term loan from EDFI Agrifi and $1.7 million in equity from Seedstars Africa Ventures.
With the recent funding, Shamba Pride plans to use it to further its expansion within Kenya, reaching more retailers and agricultural areas. Also, the startup aims to penetrate markets in Zambia, Tanzania, and Uganda, to address challenges in the agricultural supply chain.
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Speaking on the funding round, the general partner at SAV, Maxime Bouan said,
“Shamba Pride’s success is based on innovations that facilitate day-to-day farming activities. We’ve been proud to support a scalable model which creates additional revenues for farmers and agro vets (agro-dealers) and strongly contributes to successful women entrepreneurship”.
Also speaking on the startup mission, Shamba Pride founder and CEO Samuel Munguti said,
“Agriculture distribution in rural communities is heavily controlled by agro-dealers who decide how farmers access inputs, services, and training. We are empowering these agro-dealers by giving them the right tools and technology for visibility of their businesses, for their professional and commercial development, and the right support for farmers around them”.
Founded by Samuel Munguti in 2016, Shamba Pride is a technology-driven company that helps farmers access high-quality farm inputs, financing, insurance, and access through an online-to-offline platform that provides tools and technology to retailers to train them to provide quality agricultural products, finance, and insurance to their farmers.
Through Shamba Pride, last-mile agro-dealers and cooperative entrepreneurs are able to digitize their operations and provide smallholder farmers with the right and affordable technology, quality products, and services, thus creating a community of smart micro-entrepreneurs serving the smallholder farmer community.
Also, the agritech extends market connections, Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) financial services, and training information to farmers via its USSD platform. It focuses majorly on small-scale farmers within Kenya’s agriculture sector.
The startup transforms the most promising stores into DigiShops, with its platform connecting last-mile stores and farmers with manufacturers of quality inputs and services, thereby addressing problems of quality and price exploitation and promoting transparent supply chain systems.
The majority of smallholder farmers depend on informal agro-dealer stores and cooperatives to access inputs and key services, which are beset by poor supply, poor management, and exploitative prices.
Shamba Pride key purpose is to economically and socially empower and elevate farming communities at the grassroots level throughout Africa.