Kenya’s Shamba Pride, a last mile online-to-offline marketplace connecting rural farmers to info, inputs and credible agriculture services, has received $3.7 million to address the crucial challenge of providing quality and affordable agricultural inputs, services, and information to smallholders in rural areas.
The pre-series A investment of $3.7 million in Shamba Pride was led by EDFI Agrifi, the EU Agriculture Financing Initiative, which will provide a long term loan of $2 million, while Seedstars Africa Ventures, investor since 2021, has committed an additional $1.7 million in equity, reaffirming its support to the company and catalysing investments into the company from international funds.
In a statement to TechMoran, Shamba Pride CEO Samuel Munguti said: “EDFI AgriFI joined this growth journey through an investment that propels Shamba Pride towards its vision of positively impacting the lives of some 200,000 farmers by the end of 2025. The company has already grown its outreach by 10x since 2021 to reach over 220 shops, and the additional equity investment from Seedstars Africa Ventures alongside a trusted institutional financial institution is a significant milestone for the company to become a regional champion and a trusted brand for the industry.”
The investment aims to support Shamba Pride as it expands current activities in Kenya and develops additional services. The financing will enable the company to develop its franchise network and benefit from additional working capital to source agri inputs in bulk, which both will increase the impact in rural areas.
“Support for Shamba Pride reflects our commitment to empowering entrepreneurship in frontier markets, with a high impact felt in rural areas. By providing appropriate long-term debt alongside additional equity investment, EDFI AgriFI is poised to play a pivotal role to help scale up Shamba Pride operations,” said Rodrigo Madrazo, Chief Executive Officer of EDFI Management Company.
Empowering last-mile agro-dealer shops, or agrovets, with digital services such as online ordering and doorstep delivery of supplies, the platform reduces out of stock situations, allows the creation of new jobs and provides access to agricultural inputs for smallholder farmers in remote rural areas at more affordable prices.
According to The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), there are an estimated 33 million smallholder farms contributing up to 70 per cent of the food supply in Africa. Yet the farmers have limited access to training, seeds, finance and markets, and are hit by changing climate and extreme weather events. With greater investment in smallholder agriculture, many countries have the potential to increase food production and reduce poverty.
In 2021, Shamba Pride raised US$1.1 million in funding from Seedstars Africa Ventures and Gray Matters Capital to support its national expansion and distribution of its digital solution to over 1,000 digitalized stores. The deal was to increase farmer’s access to better quality inputs, education, financial services, and market connections.
The deal will also see Shamba Pride create a community of smart micro-entrepreneurs -most of them women and youth led- serving the smallholder farmer community. Thus, the growth of the company aligns with our goals to foster inclusive development.
“Shamba Pride’s success is based on innovations which facilitate the day-to-day farming activities. We’ve been proud to support a scalable model which creates additional revenues for farmers and agrovets and strongly contributes to successful women entrepreneurship”, noted Maxime Bouan General Partner at Seedstars Africa Ventures, adding that the company would now grow to new heights and scale with larger corporate partnerships.
In 2018, Shamba Pride was part of the five shortlisted ventures by Nestlé and Ashoka’s Creating Shared Prize, a global competition searching for leading innovations creating shared value, high impact, and lasting change in communities. Then known as Farmers Pride, Shamba Pride beat over 1000 entries from Africa, Asia, Europe , the Americas and Middle East to be among the 56 organisations shortlisted globally and four enterprises shortlisted locally including TruTrade, SimGas Kenya and Amref Kenya’s Leap.
In November 2020, then known as Farmers Pride, Shamba Pride raised US$220,000 funding from Gray Matters Capital under its gender portfolio coLABS, for growth. The firm was to use the funds to sign up 500,000, female rural farmers to boost their income and productivity, develop its agro-dealer franchise and launch of 50 technology-powered women and youth owned village level DigiShops. These has bore fruit to what we see today.
In 2021, Shamba Pride was part of the five tech-enabled Kenyan startups chosen to join the second cohort of the NINJA Accelerator in Kenya. Others in the cohort included Saada Tech, Kijenzi, M-Paya, and MyMoviesAfrica.
Seedstars Africa Ventures is zeroing down on investments in 2024 after recently securing $30 million from EIB Global, adding to an $8 million commitment from LBO France to invest in early-stage startups (seed and Series A) across Sub-Saharan Africa, with follow-on funding up to Series B. The African Development Bank (AfDB) also injected $10.50 million into Seedstars Africa Ventures to enable it to invest in high-growth companies active across Sub-Saharan Africa. The fund focuses on businesses that have strong potential, are generating income and tackling key challenges in the market.
Shamba Pride meets these criteria as it projects to be serving some 200,000 farmers by the end of 2025 and has already grown its outreach by 10x since 2021 to reach over 220 shops.
Prior to founding Shamba Pride, Samuel was COO at Farm Shop and had founded DaktariPap, a platform linking farmers to credible Vet, agronomy and insurance service providers. He has over 18 years experience last mile distribution in agriculture and FMCG industry and has managed product research and development, last mile distribution, sales and marketing for several multinationals across Africa including Coca-Cola, L’Oréal and Colgate Palmolive.
Currently pursuing his PhD in Development Studies from University of Nairobi, Samuel Munguti’s Shamba Pride is currently the biggest online-to-offline platform connecting smallholder farmers to services technology-powered digishops. The CRM, extension, BNPL and market linkage commerce platform not only solves supply chain bottlenecks but also modernizes agrodealers and their customers operations creating a local farming community of improved choice, variety , better prices and transparency .
“Shamba Pride is revolutionising rural distribution systems for African farmers by transforming from traditional and informal systems to modern trade,” Samuel said on his first raise from Seedstars Africa Ventures and Gray Matters Capital. “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-entreprenuers offering improved services to farmers.”
Robin Boereboom, AgriFI Senior Investment Officer, EDFI Management Company agrees with Samuel’s sentiments adding that Samuel Munguti applied his experience in supply chain and marketing within fast-moving consumer goods companies to disrupt the local agri inputs’ sector.
“We’re excited to support a locally grown and innovative digital initiative that is revolutionizing the agri input ecosystem in rural areas, with significant benefits for both agrovets and farmers,” said Boereboom.