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IBM Research and agtech startups Hello Tractor has developed an AI and blockchain platform for African farmers. The two companies will pilot the product in 2019 through an ongoing partnership co-financed by IBM.
Doubled Digital Wallet in beta, the cloud-based service aims to support Hello Tractor activities of linking small farmers to equipment and data analysis for better agricultural production.
"Agriculture is a complex industry that can have so many different variables, we are bringing a decision-making tool to the AI and blockchain Hello Tractor ecosystem," said Hello Tractor's CEO at TechCrunch. , Jehiel Oliver.
The startup joined IBM Research to demonstrate the new service at Startup Battlefield Africa in Lagos.
Available to Hello Tractor customers, the online platform will use digital accounting and machine learning to capture, track and share data, "creating end-to-end trust and transparency in the agribusiness value chain ", according to a version of IBM.
Digital Wallet will draw on remote-based time-based and IoT and AI methods to help farmers determine crops and inputs, choose when to plant, optimize and forecast crops.
The cloud-based dashboard also employs a master blockchain book to improve multiple Hello Tractor activity points.
"We are an agricultural technology company.Our platform connects farmers who need tractor services to tractor owners who own these assets as assets.We create that market to bring supply and demand together", Oliver said.
Demand is derived from 80 percent of sub-Saharan Africa crops harvested without tractors or machinery, and 50 percent of the continent's farmers are suffering from post-harvest losses annually, according to IBM and the US Department of Agriculture. , nutrition and agriculture.
The Digital Portfolio of IBM and Hello Tractor will also record fleet owners' data regarding the use of tractors, track and predict repairs and assistance, and create credit profiles to open bank financing for farmers.
Hello Tractor is a connection service: neither the startup nor its agricultural customers own tractors. Founded in 2014, the company started its operations in Nigeria and expanded to Kenya, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania and Bangladesh in the last year, according to its CEO. A for-profit entity, Hello Tractor raised funds from private investors, DFI grants and a seed round.
The company currently generates revenue by selling tractor monitoring devices and software subscriptions for its app, according to Oliver. Hi Tractor does not yet charge transactional costs for connecting tractors to farmers, "but we will test next year," he said.
The start also plans to create more revenue opportunities from data analysis.
"At this stage we focus mainly on mechanization, but by pairing information obtained through that device with the IBM platform solutions specifically for agriculture, it is possible to extend the value we offer to our customers and … be monetized", called Oliver.
He estimates the activity of linking small farmers to tractors as a "multi-billion dollar market" globally, and points to Nigeria as the African nation with "the largest inventory of non-cultivated farmland", 37% of the country, according to World Bank data
The co-financing of IBM Research for the realization of Digital Wallet does not include any shareholding in Hello Tractor, confirmed by IBM.
The collaboration aligns with IBM's global agricultural strategy, largely incorporated into its Watson AI business platform and global agtech partnerships. As claimed by TechCrunch, at the beginning of this year IBM has partnered with Twiga, Kenya's startup agtech, to introduce a blockchain-enabled working capital platform into the Twiga provider network .
IBM Research considers the partnership "as a scientific research collaboration," according to VP Solomon Assefa.
"Through all its contact points – farmers, machinery, dealers, crops, data inputs – Hello Tractor convenes the entire agricultural ecosystem," he said.
As discussed in Startup Battlefield Africa, Africa is shaping its startups and blockchain-focused use cases – characterized more by utility than by speculation. As for cryptography, there were several ICOs in 2018, including the $ 7 million SurRemit tokens to launch remittances, the $ 1 million Wala payment offer and the purchase of Sun Exchange for South African solar energy.
The IBM Research and Hello Tractor teams will continue building the blockchain-enabled Digital Wallet at the lab, engineer, and business levels throughout 2019.
"We are cultivating the partnership … including the executive and go-to-market side, you also need to focus on how you scale," Assefa said.
