Kenya-based agritech Apollo Agriculture plans to double the number of farmers it is serving by the end of 2022. This is after raising $40 million in Series B funding in an equity round led by Softbank Vision Fund 2. The round was also joined by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Launched in 2016, the startup works with a network of agents, who recruit farmers and retailers to its platform.
Kenya-based Agritech Apollo Raises $40 Million in Softbank-led Round
Apollo’s products include insurance – which is offered by its partners including Pula, the Kenya-based insurtech. Other investors include Anthemis Exponential Ventures, Flourish Ventures, Leaps by Bayer, and Softbank Investment. Pollak and St Sauver had previously worked at The Climate Corporation in the U.S., where they helped farmers use data in making production decisions.
Its latest funding round included participation from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Yara Growth Ventures, Endeavor Catalyst, CDC, and existing investors including Anthemis Exponential Ventures, Flourish Ventures, Leaps by Bayer, SBI, Breyer Capital, and TO Ventures Food.
Kenya’s agriculture industry accounts for 26% of the country’s GDP, employs over 40% of the population, and generates 65 percent of the country’s export revenues. Because of its importance to the country’s economic well-being, the industry is a top priority for innovators.
Apollo Agriculture co-founder and CEO Eli Pollak, while talking about their areas of priority, have stated,
“We are continuing to invest in growing fast, serving more farmers, helping them grow their acreage and really hitting the acceleration on the business. And so that’ll be both continued expansion across Kenya but also expansion into new markets.”
The agritech is scouting for growth opportunities in East and West Africa. Pollak, The co-founder of Apollo along with Benjamin Njenga and Earl St Sauver said,
“We are also continuing to develop products that deliver more value per acre. That could be new crops that enable customers to earn more money,”
Apollo began by assisting maize farmers, but it has now expanded its emphasis to include other high-yielding crops. Apollo began by assisting maize farmers, but it has now expanded its emphasis to include other high-yielding crops.
He said,
“We began with maize. Maize is not perfect, but it has a profound advantage, which is that nearly every farmer plants it across East Africa. This gives us a place where we can earn farmer’s trust and we can deliver value immediately,”
He also added,
“We believe that the pathway from subsistence farming to farming as a business means partnering with that farmer and using our machine learning models to identify the farmers with the best prospects of graduating to higher-profitability crops.”
Apollo had worked with 100,000 farmers by the end of last year, with intentions to quadruple that number by the end of this year. It has a nationwide network of “over a thousand” merchants and 5,000 agents.
Farmers are signed up for the Apollo platform via the agents, while retailers utilize the startup’s “checkout app” to manage point of sale, inventories, wholesale purchases, and trade credit.
Apollo has expanded tenfold since the closing of a $6 million series A in 2020, according to Pollak, thanks to product financing. Over the years, the agritech has received over $16 million in loan finance for forwarding lending.
Twiga, a B2B supply-chain startup, and iProcure, a farm input procurement, and last-mile distribution service platform are two more agritechs that are already making waves in the industry. Check out about Apollo agriculture more.