Home ›› 13 Nov 2022 ›› Business Connect
Sixty-five-year-old Rahim Sheikh, a frontier farmer in Kurigram district, has been struggling to bear the expense of his five-member family for a long time.
To earn money quicker, at one point, he decided to leave farming and started rickshaw-pulling. But it only led to adverse effects on his already deteriorating health.
After a while, he came to know about a private organisation that helps farmers like him with access to finance, high quality agricultural input, advisory and access to the fair market.
Bursting with hope, Rahim went to an agent of the platform, learned the details, got registered through its app and received the seed money to buy two cows and make ample profit by rearing them.
He now looks after his cattle which requires minimum labour and can be managed from the comfort of his home from where his wife can also contribute to their venture. They are not struggling so much anymore.
This has been possible because of the agri-tech platform, iFarmer. With its unique and revolutionary model of asset-sharing, iFarmer is providing a helping hand to struggling cultivators and giving farmers like Rahim Sheikh new hope.
The platform manages finance for livestock and grain crops and brings profits for small-scale farmers by connecting them with potential funders who are inclined to invest money in exchange for promising returns, impacting agricultural sustainability.
Since its inception in August 2018, iFarmer has connected more than 79,000 farmers through its “Sofol” app.
iFarmer has also facilitated more than Tk 179 crore in funding support for farmers across Bangladesh and helped sell more than 1,55,000 tons of farm produce so far.
Birth of the idea
“I joined Catalyst, a multinational NGO, after graduating from North South University (NSU) in 2010. The NGO worked with farmers and dealers of seeds and fertilizers to support agriculture.
“As part of my job, I had to travel to remote villages of the country. I worked there for three years, during which I got an up-close view of the farmers’ lives, economy and agriculture practices,” said Fahad Ifaz, co-founder and CEO of iFarmer, while talking to The Business Post.
“Later, I decided to work at the policy level because ground-level issues cannot be solved unless policies are not changed for the better. Then I worked as a private sector consultant at the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation for two and a half years.
“During my time there, I had the chance to work with governments and private investments, as well as work on policy-level issues. Working there was prestigious but I found out that I cannot do anything for the World Bank on my own since it’s already a big corporation and has different layers,” he said.
In 2014, Fahad established a consultancy company named “EDGE Consultancy” at Mohakhali DOHS with a partner, which worked mostly on research, study publications and project design. The office was later shifted to Banani and employed 10 people.
“In 2016, I moved to Myanmar to work for the Swiss government’s project Care International. I led the $30 million project that ran 405 offices and had 70 employees. The project was on Myanmar farmers’ capacity building. I worked there and in Cambodia until 2019.
“While working in those countries, I saw that the local farmers faced problems in getting loan assistance just like the farmers in Bangladesh. Their products also reach consumers after changing four or five hands and they do not get proper prices. Just like in Bangladesh,” he said.
Fahad reminisced, “It was at this time that the idea of working for as well as with the farmers came to my mind. In Bangladesh too, government and non-government organizations invest a lot of money to increase the capacity of farmers, but there’s not much of an outcome.
“I worked for almost 10 years in agriculture and economic settlement. Almost 90 per cent of the work our consultancy firm Edge Consultancy did was also on agriculture. I knew this sector’s problems. Soon, I came to realize that there should be private sector’s investment or IT usage for its growth.”
Becoming iFarmer
After he returned to Bangladesh, Fahad Ifaz and Jamil M Akbar, his friend from NSU, launched a rooftop agro-business in 2018. They only had a room in Gulshan and a laptop to work with at the time.
Jamil had a wide array of experiences in IT-related solutions and used to provide technical services to various world-renowned companies.
After six months, the duo realized that they would not be able to make significant progress with their current plan. Soon after, they changed the plan and decided to provide direct small loans to farmers.
“At first, we started with 40 farmers in the Kurigram district. We met with them, collected data from them, and decided to buy 40 cattle for 40 farmers. But we did not have enough money to bear the whole cost.
“So we went to several banks and start-ups but they did not trust our financing model and rejected our proposal,” Fahad said. “However, in the end, we managed to convince some of our friends and relatives that we won’t flee with their money and to trust our plan and vision.”
With the money, Fahad and Jamil went to Kurigram and bought the cattle for 40 farmers. Some money was also given to each of the farmers for vaccination and for feeding their cattle. They also appointed two people to look after those farmers.
Back in Dhaka, the two entrepreneurs focused on the technical aspects and created the company website. They got iFarmer formally registered on January 1, 2019. This time around, they could feel the success.
The farmers sold all the cows within a year and returned the money along with profit. By that time, the duo made a list of 100 more farmers for the second phase and started using social media for branding.
“We got a breakthrough near the end of 2019. A Singapore-based accelerator programme named Accelerating Asia gave us $100,000 as pre-seed money. It was a turning point for iFarmer,” Fahad said.
This, however, was just the beginning. Later on, the organisation has been awarded and got impact based funding several times. In 2020, iFarmer received a total of $700,000 seed funding from Accelerating Asia, Falcon Ventures, Zayn Capital, and Angels. In 2021, iFarmer also received $2 million in pre-series A from IDLC VC Fund and Millville Opportunities.
“We worked with farmers in the profit-sharing model under the sharecropping arrangement. We train the farmers, invest in the cattle business and share profits. Between 2019 and 2020, we connected with 1,200-1,500 farmers,” he said.
“iFarmer has a dedicated field team that maintains regular communications with the farmers. They monitor the farms and update primary data from the farmers into the Sofol app,” said Fahad.
“People did not know that good profit is possible from agriculture. This is our contribution. Currently, we have 79,000 farmers registered through our app in 20-22 districts where we operate. Besides getting funds from individual funders, we have partnered up with several banks that are also investing in agriculture through our company,” he said.
The operation
Anyone with the intention to invest in this venture can visit the iFarmer website or download the iFarmer app that is available both on Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store.
In the app, they can select the preferred farm from a pool of farms offering varieties of investment options.
“Sofol is an application dedicated to our farmers to keep track of their data and make the process tech enabled for better results. Farmers can get registered, complete their e-KYC and receive necessary updates through Sofol,” he added.
“We keep the funders updated with the state of the farm they have invested on so that they get to see the process of impacting the lives of the farmer,” said Fahad.
“We are now trying to teach the farmers about technology, how to upload the data to the Sofol app on their own. It will take some time. Till then, the field facilitators will take care of this,” he said.
Developing supply chain
At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the farmers were having trouble selling their products, iFarmer took a new initiative with the hope to solve the issue. They started buying fresh products directly from the farmers and selling them in the wholesale market in Dhaka.
Fahad said, “We started the supply chain operation in July 2020. We sold at least 50 tonnes of products every day in 2020. Now it’s almost 10,000 tonnes every day.
“We deliver the agro products after proper assessments and ensuring fair prices to farmers. We are also carrying out business-to-business supply with super shops, like Bengal meat.”
iFarmer has set up 83 collection centres across the country, where farmers can directly sell their products. The platform offers fair pricing, instant payments within 24 hours and a hassle-free experience to make the lives of the farmers easier.
Multiple facilities
iFarmer aims to make the lives of farmers easier with 360 degree solutions for them. They not only ensure financing and fair market access, but also provide the farmers with high quality agricultural inputs and advisory service.
Moreover, the farmers can have the soil of their lands tested using iFarmer’s soil sensor-based technology, which provides baseline information on the health of the soil in a few minutes.
They receive customised advisories based on satellite-based remote sensing and regular weather alerts. They can also register their queries and receive weather and advisory updates through the iFarmer call centre.
iFarmer also makes sure that the funders do not have to take the risk of any loss. “If your farm gets involved in an unpredictable accident, there are insurance facilities to cover it. So far, there hasn’t been any claim,” Fahad added.
Overcoming challenges
Fahad said that there were not many challenges at the farmers’ end since the beginning except the fact that not all of the farmers are tech-savvy and have smartphones. However, iFarmer intends to educate the farmers and their household members on the usage of technology, especially smartphones.
He also mentioned their biggest challenge was to create awareness on the funders’ end since most people think that investing in agriculture is risky with a low chance of profit.
On another note, access to finance has always been a major problem for farmers in countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia and Myanmar. No matter how much the NGOs are supporting or the government is subsidising, access to finance still holds a huge gap between demand and supply, he said.
He mentioned, “The government should rethink how financing can be made easy. There are many farmers who have made an attachment with the banks for the very first time with iFarmer’s help.
“In the government’s aim to build Digital Bangladesh, agriculture has not been given the proper focus, which could have addressed the needs and potential of the massive sector. We don’t have a storage facility and due to that, farmers have to sell their goods instantly and incur losses every day,” Fahad added.
On top of everything, iFarmer has built a dynamic team to move forward and reach their collective goal.
“iFarmer currently has more than 200 employees. This team anyhow manages to overcome the challenges with their hard work, dedication and their zeal to create an impact,” Fahad highlighted.
Vision and dream
Regarding their plans for the future, the iFarmer CEO said, “I want to launch a one-stop solution for the farmers. They still have to run to different places for loans, seeds, fertilisers, advice, and sales. We want to reduce the farmers’ hassles.”
To make iFarmer a one-stop solution for farmers, the team has already started working on it and built 30 collection centres around the country that also work as one-stop solution centres, he said. Farmers can go to their nearest collection centre and get their queries answered.
“We want to build an environment in which mutual trust can develop and matters can be discussed openly. There are 60 million farmers in Bangladesh. A single company cannot provide all types of support.
“The government is providing a lot of subsidies but this cannot continue forever. There must be innovative solutions and private investment. The structure should be developed in such a way that people can trust it to invest in agriculture,” Fahad said.
“Brac has changed the lives of millions of people. Like them, we too have much scope to flourish and we want to be a platform that will make a similar impact. In future, iFarmer will be a global company that will make a significant impact on people’s life and the economy. Within two years, we will be an inter-country platform and work with banks in other countries too,” he said with his eyes on a future full of hope.
