In today’s world, the issue around food security has called for concerns around the globe such that countries are pulling their weights in combating food waste and climate change.
In Nigeria for instance, there is still a high dependency rate on food importation. Malnutrition is widespread across the country, especially the rural areas due to food shortages and even as far as poor quality of food.
In a chat with AbdulAziz Kabir the founder of Farm365, we learnt how the company is combating food waste in Africa.
Farm365 is a Food Technology company that works closely with rural farmers to reduce post-harvest loss by providing a guaranteed and reliable market to sell their farm produce even before harvest.
The agtech company’s approach is set to ensure access to low-cost and high-quality food after realizing that food waste is a reoccurring issue in Nigeria.
Narrating how he started AbdulAziz a graduate from the School of Informatics in Kano State with a background in software said he grew up loving anything that revolves around agriculture and farming.
By the time he clocked 15, he had his first farm where he planted maize during raining season. Stating further, the farm blossomed and yielded large output despite his lack of “know-how” then.
This development got him excited and thus a passion was born that led him into planting other vegetables during dry season.
Farm 365 lets you bring fresh vegetables of all types straight from the farm land without any hassle.
The agtech company work closely with farmers to provide vegetables to end users like households and restaurants.
“I understand the pain of rural farmers who provide 95% of what we consume, out of this figures we lose 45% in field before reaching the market.
Food waste is a big issue. If it was a country, it’d rank as the world’s third-biggest contributor to greenhouse emissions.”
However, Abdulaziz felt his call was to build a solution that will reduce food waste starting from the farm, thus he founded Farm365 with the focus of the company reducing food waste.
“By going directly to farmers, asking what they’ve got for the season, we’re cutting out many roadblocks
and reducing the amount of food chucked away. Better for the community, better for your food.”, AbdulAziz added
Farm365 overview
Farm365 platform is a vegetable and fruit box delivery marketplace that sources quality farm produce directly from rural farmers and sells in urban areas through its last-mile delivery.
The agtech company speaks to farmers and customers to choose what they want in their boxes. Farm365 platform delivers directly to customer’s doorsteps, serving as advocates of food to fork.
The mission of Farm365 provides access to low-cost high-quality food across cities in Africa.
“Working alongside farmers will help us in actualizing our dream of zero waste. This will play a vital role in achieving food security, sustainable communities and cities and it will harness proper production and consumption.”
To achieve this, Farm365 partnered with Redex Logistics Limited and Cold Hubs to attain an effective and sustainable end-to-end supply chain.
“A third of the food grown in the world is wasted, we believe this has to stop, all food grown must be eaten.
Doing the right thing is at the core of everything we do, especially when it comes to how we run our business.
We believe it is our responsibility to help even more people fight food waste and do it in a sustainable way. That is why we are Farm365.”
Challenges and milestone
As startups are constrained to resources, Farm365 has bootstrapped through its journey from family and friends that brought it to where it is today.
The startup is raising pre-seed round which will help it to continue building its product to attain a market fit in the coming months.
“Sourcing for farmers who grow vegetables from different states and clusters has been one of our milestones. As the farmers are the feeders of the platform. Farmer’s love what we are building and it makes us very excited”, the founder said.
However, the startup launched its MVP which was a website to buy vegetables and fruits to get more customers communicating with them and placing their orders.
“As we are in our early-stage working on the Beta version which is coming up next week. we are taking feedback and building what the market wants.
We are working on our box delivery package which is sustainable to our environment and flexible to household and businesses.”, he said
Tech Journey
AbdulAziz started his first tech company that failed after 16 months of trial, a development that made the journey more fascinating, this occurring to him that he needed to obtain a certain capability to build a meaningful company.
On his Founder Institute experience, the founder said that “I was on my entrepreneurial journey before I joined founder institute program.
Perhaps, Founder Institute gave me a new perspective on problem-solving. FI program is like a nursery for startup to fine-tune their purpose and create a meaningful company.”
In the near future, AbdulAziz sees Farm365 creating the future of food distribution in Africa streamlines by technology.
“We want to create an African food retail machine that will be named the Bus stop of quality food.”, AbdulAziz concluded.
Featured Image: AbdulAziz, Founder, Farm365
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