It’s been a long road to the top for FarmCrowdy; from the early days when it looked like just an idea, all the way through their recent exploits. FarmCrowdy has played their game right to become a well established digital agriculture platform. This is the story of how everything began.
The Beginning
With a background in Information Technology, E-marketing and Online Travel business, Onyeka Akumah (CEO of FarmCrowdy) got an insight on how technology was changing the sheep farming business in China while at a tech conference in Abuja. This insight birthed the idea of FarmCrowdy; although there wasn’t a solid plan at that time.
For several months, Onyeka went on to research the agriculture business in Nigeria and found out that farmers faced three major problems: acess to the market, input and technical-know-how. He then came up with a crowdfunding model but finally decided on a partnership model where everyone would be given an opportunity to participate in agriculture.
Bringing in the Co-Founders
Onyeka needed a team to help build his idea into an empire and he had three factors in mind for the perfect co-founders. The first was similar values, then contribution and third, commitment.
The team started with Ifeanyi Anazodo (the current VP, Data Intelligence) who was once a brand consultant for Etisalat Nigeria. Next was Akindele Philips who has a background in accounting and is the current Chief Financial Officer.
Christopher Abidun then came on board as the Chief Technology Officer in February 2016. Christopher is Onyeka’s longtime friend and had formerly taught Onyeka Java Programming.
In May 2016, African Farmer Mogaji joined the team first as a consultant then became the Chief Operating Officer in July 2016. However, he decided to resign from the company in February 2017 to focus on working with one of the government ministries. He has remained a stakeholder of FarmCrowdy till date.
Temitope Omotolani was the last to join the founding team in August 2016 and brought with her, her hands-on farming experience and in-depth knowledge of the agriculture business. She later became the Chief Operations Officer.
Toughest Moments
Calamity befell the company when more than half of their first poultry farm birds were lost in transit due to heat. There were also some unfortunate events with their first tomato farm which made cultivating, harvesting and preparing the tomatoes in time for the off-takers impossible. These and other series of events forced the co-founders to rethink the whole project.
Becoming FarmCrowdy Group and Other Achievements
Farmcrowdy has since moved on to become Nigeria’s foremost leading agri-tech company, empowering over 12,000 farmers across 13 states in Nigeria; reared close to 2,000,000 birds, cultivated 16,000+ acres of farmland with over 35,000 farm units sold.
On the 21st of March 2019, Farmcrowdy Group was born with a mandate of building agri-tech solutions that enable the achievement of food security in Africa. The Farmcrowdy group currently is comprised of subsidiaries including Farmcrowdy and Farmgate Africa.
The company also recently raised an additional seed funding of $1 million from Cox Enterprises, Techstars, and Ajayi Solutions and is preparing for a Series A fundraise later in 2019.
Farmcrowdy Group operates from its Lekki, Lagos office as its Headquarters and has a second office at the Civic Innovation Centre, Abuja.
