News in brief: Ghana-based agritech startup Complete Farmer has secured $10.4 million in pre-Series A funding to enhance Africa’s agricultural supply chain by connecting farmers with global industries through its end-to-end marketplace.
A Ghanaian agritech startup, Complete Farmer, has raised $10.4 million in pre-Series A funding to improve Africa’s agricultural supply chain, Disrupt Africa reports.
Complete Farmer is an end-to-end agricultural marketplace that connects African farmers with global industries. Its platform provides farmers with access to competitive markets, resources, data, and more. It also leverages proprietary cultivation protocols to help farmers produce commodities that meet global market specifications.
CEO Desmond Koney, a mechanical engineering graduate, said that challenges he discovered in the agricultural industry, after inheriting his father’s farm, prompted him to start the company to attempt providing solutions. He confessed that it has evolved over time.
For example, Complete Farmer operated as a contractor to cultivate farms on behalf of clients in its early beginnings. Then, it launched a crowdfunding platform in 2018 which allowed users to invest in sustainable farms and monitor activities. After the pandemic disrupted its crowdfunding model, it moved on to running an aggregator and marketplace platform. Its two main products are now CF Grower and CF Buyer; they assist farmers in optimising their productivity and provides global purchasers with dependable and convenient access to commodities.
The company currently operates in Ghana, where it has over 12,000 farmers and has overseen the cultivation of over 30,000 acres of land. Its annual revenue has grown from $2.8 million in 2021 to $5.3 million in 2022, with projections to reach $7.5 million in 2023.
Complete Farmer plans to use the new funding to launch new product lines, develop an embedded finance product, and create a vendor platform for farmers to purchase fertilisers and commodities.
Additionally, the funding will support scaling efforts, strategic partnerships, team expansion, and the launch of fulfillment centers in new markets.
The equity part of the funding was led by Acumen Resilient Agriculture Fund (ARAF) and Alitheia Capital through its uMunthu II Fund in collaboration with Goodwell Investments. Other participants included Proparco, Newton Partners, and VestedWorld Rising Star Fund.
Meanwhile, the debt financing was provided by Sahel Capital’s SEFAA Fund, Alpha Mundi Group’s Alpha Jiri Investment Fund, and Global Social Impact Investments.
