Complete Farmer, a Ghanaian agritech startup, has announced that it has obtained a $10.4 million pre-Series A funding round — $7m in equity and $3.4m in debt — to streamline its operations.
The Acumen Resilient Agriculture Fund (ARAF) and Alitheia Capital (via its uMunthu II Fund in partnership with Goodwell Investments) co-led the equity part of the round. Proparco, Newton Partners, and VestedWorld Rising Star Fund also took part.
Sahel Capital’s SEFAA (Social Enterprise Fund for Agriculture in Africa) Fund, Alpha Mundi Group’s Alpha Jiri Investment Fund and Global Social Impact Investments offered debt financing.
The startup, founded in 2017 by Desmond Koney (CEO), aims to revolutionise African farming practices by developing the necessary physical and technical infrastructure to boost efficiency along the entire value chain of agriculture.
Complete Farmer claims it’s an end-to-end agricultural marketplace that connects farmers in Africa and other parts of the world to competitive markets, resources, and data.
This platform is a one-stop resource that uses exclusive cultivation protocols for crop production, allowing smallholder and commercial farmers to grow goods that meet the requirements of the global market and ensuring post-harvest offtake.
The agritech has undergone several iterations since its launch before reaching its present state.
The business started out working as a contractor to cultivate farms for customers. It continued to implement its solution until the COVID-19 pandemic.
Incorporating its prior experience as a contractor and receiving crowdfunding, it transitioned to a marketplace and aggregator model. Koney says Complete Farmer found a way to supply customers with the necessary crops via its connections to thousands of farmers from earlier platform iterations.
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Complete Farmer's primary services to agricultural commodity suppliers and consumers are CF Grower and CF Buyer. Its farmer-focused product, CF Grower, enables African farmers to maximise their productivity, access global markets, and raise their living standards through data-driven cultivation protocols and precision farming tools.
Meanwhile, CF Buyer offers dependable and practical access to commodities grown to customers' specifications to buyers globally. It gives buyers complete control over their procurement process by providing them access to a sizable network of qualified producers, a streamlined digital process for obtaining quality-certified goods, and a transparent way to track the status of their orders from order to fulfilment.
Following the pivot in 2021, the startup maintained that growth in userbase and revenue was immediate. It reported that it has successfully brought together over 12,000 farmers from five significant regions in Ghana.
It has also managed the farming of more than 30,000 acres of land, providing commodities to Asia, Europe, and other regions across the globe while lowering post-harvest losses.
Complete Farmer was making $2.8 million yearly by the end of 2021 after deducting a 30% commission from the earnings from each farmer-to-buyer transaction. Koney claims it had $5.3 million at the end of 2022 and is on track to reach $7.5 million this year.
