Rabo Frontier Ventures invests in Wefarm
With an additional $11 million in capital, Wefarm will offer millions of farmers stronger knowledge sharing and commerce opportunities
LONDON, United Kingdom – March 9th, 2021 – Rabo Frontier Ventures has invested in Wefarm’s Series-A Plus round, led by Octopus Ventures. The world’s largest platform for small-scale farmers will expand its SMS service into an online platform, following this $11 million Series A-Plus round. Since 2015, Wefarm has provided 2.5 million farmers with a free, AI-driven SMS tool to connect them with each other and a trusted marketplace. This platform expansion marks a new moment of connectivity for hundreds of millions of farmers worldwide.
Series A-Plus Round
The $11mn round was led by Octopus Ventures, with participation from new and existing investors, including True Ventures, Rabo Frontier Ventures, LocalGlobe, June Fund and AgFunder. This round of investment brings Wefarm’s total funding to $31 million.
“Millions of smallholder farmers already use Wefarm to improve the output of their farms, and Wefarm is well on its way to further unlock their enormous potential. With this round Wefarm will continue to add new farmers to the platform and further build out their digital smallholder ecosystem”, says managing partner RFV Jeroen van Doornik.
“Wefarm is building the definitive platform and network for the world’s biggest vertical,” said Wefarm Founder and CEO, Kenny Ewan. “This is perhaps the largest community on Earth and yet it’s been vastly underserved by tech. Today, the community is ready to expand into an online space with us. We have years of learnings and millions of data points to strengthen our first-mover advantage as we build the online expansion of Wefarm for hundreds of millions of farmers.”
This investment enables Wefarm to supercharge the development of its online platform and marketplace, so it can continue to connect farmers to the knowledge and resources they need to succeed at scale. Over the last few years, Wefarm’s model has become more important than ever. The platform is enabling farmers who are vital for the world’s food production to connect with one another and leverage the power of their community. Using Wefarm, millions of farmers can combine their knowledge and buying power as they tackle global challenges that are impacting their yields such as climate change, limited soil fertility and growing demands for food worldwide.
Wefarm
Wefarm’s platform enables farmers to connect to their community, so they can know more, buy smarter, and sell better. The goal of the company is to rewrite global supply chains and enable the world’s 400 million small-scale farmers to fulfill their economic potential. To do so, Wefarm is building the definitive platform and network for the world’s biggest vertical. Wefarm’s platform enables farmers to share knowledge for free, and access a marketplace of trustworthy retailers and brands. The platform is free for farmers to use, and can be accessed online or via SMS.
To date, 2.4 million farmers have connected with one another for free and without access to the internet via the Wefarm SMS platform. The company pioneered this offline technology for the market in 2015. Over 37 million knowledge-sharing conversations have taken place on the Wefarm SMS service, while the marketplace has generated $29,000,000 in sales. The online expansion of the SMS service features a forum-based platform. This enables farmers to form value-chain groups, lead multi-way conversations, and combine their buying and selling power to gain a more favourable position in global markets.
Rabo Frontier Ventures
RFV is a €150 million investment fund of Rabobank, focusing globally on innovative Fintech and Agtech companies. RFV aims to invest directly in the early growth stage (series B) of companies that are disrupting or influencing the current business of Rabobank and indirect in leading general tech funds such as Greyhound Capital, Holtzbrinck, Northzone, Speedinvest and Valar Ventures.