Shamba Pride, a Kenyan agri-tech firm, has acquired $1.1 million in investment to help it expand across the nation and roll out its solution to over 1,000 retailers.
Shamba Pride is a one-stop online-to-offline platform that uses technology-powered “DigiShops” to link smallholder farmers to quality inputs, services, and information.
Seedstars Africa Ventures and Gray Matters Capital have just invested US $1.1 million in the firm, which will be used to assist its national expansion and distribution of its digital solution to over 1,000 digitalized stores.
Hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers will be able to raise their income and productivity as a result of increasing access to better quality inputs, education, financial services, and market connections.
“Shamba Pride is revolutionising rural distribution systems for African farmers by transforming from traditional and informal systems to modern trade. Through Shamba Pride, existing last-mile agro dealer entrepreneurs are able to digitalise their operations and provide smallholder farmers with right and affordable technology, quality products and services. The model establishes a network of smart micro-entrepreneurs serving the smallholder farmer community, allowing farmers to increase their farm productivity, sustain their employment and their household income,” said chief executive officer (CEO) and founder Samuel Munguti.
“We are excited to have Seedstars Africa Ventures and Gray Matters Capital join the Shamba Pride family. Our momentum to revolutionise last-mile distribution systems for African farmers has gained new momentum. The investment will propel our national growth to service hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers while creating a reliable community of smart micro-entrepreneurs offering improved services to farmers.”
Despite delivering concrete adaptive solutions, skilled African early-stage businesses, according to Maxime Bouan, partner at Seedstars Africa Ventures, continue to lack investment.
“We are convinced Shamba Pride’s online-to-offline model is perfectly suited to tap into a huge market opportunity by upskilling existing value chains and finally offering farmers the quality counterparts they deserve. Beyond capital, we will continue to actively support the company through additional market linkages and corporate partnerships within Africa and beyond to guarantee farmers obtain the best value,” he said.
