{"id":69393,"date":"2023-06-19T11:21:28","date_gmt":"2023-06-19T11:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/startup.info\/?p=69393"},"modified":"2023-08-14T21:04:02","modified_gmt":"2023-08-14T21:04:02","slug":"kitovu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bonjouridee.com\/en\/kitovu\/","title":{"rendered":"Kitovu : creating market access for farmers by using multilingual mobile applications"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\">\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\" style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>  <\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">My grandmother was a smallholder farmer and I always wondered why despite her hard work, she never really had a lot to show for it. It was to take several years for me to find out. When I got admission to <\/span>University<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> of Nigeria Nsukka to study<em> Mechanical Engineering<\/em>, she teased me, saying I was running away from the farm. I promised her that whatever I learn, I would apply that to build solutions that help her and people like her. Unfortunately, she passed away before I had the chance to keep my promise.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">And something I shouldn&#8217;t have forgotten, I forgot. Well until I was posted to<em> Oyo State<\/em> for mandatory National Youth Service. There, I joined the Agro-Allied Scheme and started my first farm and for the first time truly lived in the shoes of farmers. Not only did I achieve sub-optimal yields, market access was also in-existent. I felt there had to be a way to use emerging technology to solve these problems. That was how Kitovu Technology was born. My team comprises of very young and talented sector diverse skilled graduates with a passion to transform Africa into the hub that feeds the world by leveraging technology.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\" style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Link to online video\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"boombox-responsive-embed \"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Meet Emeka: Competition Winner, Changing Agriculture in Nigeria\" width=\"1160\" height=\"653\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-k27FFIY-UA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\" style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Your products and services\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Our core products are <em>FarmPack, FarmSwap, <\/em>and<em> eProcure<\/em>.<em> FarmPack<\/em> is a bundled product offering consisting of soil and crop-specific fertilizers, improved seedlings, agro-chemicals, extension, advisory and disease early warning, while <em>FarmSwap<\/em> is our flagship microcredit product that allows farmers to take <em>FarmPack<\/em> and pay us with produce at harvest.<em> eProcure<\/em> is our produce aggregation service for processors and exporters.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\" style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Your success factors\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In-depth experience and understanding of the Nigerian agricultural space, very innovative product offerings, a huge market, and <\/span>team<span style=\"color: #000000;\"> of very passionate young people constitute our biggest rights to succeed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\" style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Your factors differentiating and disruptive compared to the existing\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Unlike our competition who are not able to provide the disruptive services we provide; from soil and crop-specific fertilizers to precise delivery of products enabled by our produce rank algorithm, we provide farmers with microcredit for inputs, a huge value-added service to them alongside the free extension, advisory and disease early warning we provide them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\" style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Your business model<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">We leverage our micro-entrepreneur network to sell our core products; <em>FarmPack, FarmSwap, and eProcure<\/em>, which is how we make money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\" style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>A few words about your competitors<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">At the moment, we do not have a single business organization that does what we do. But we have different organizations that provide some of the services that we provide. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">They include:<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Soil Testing-Zeetech, SGS, IITA<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Traditional Inputs Marketing-Cybernetics, Maina Seeds<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Produce Aggregation-Ojaoko, Ngex.com<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\" style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>Your website\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.kitovu.com.ng\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">http:\/\/www.kitovu.com.ng<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My grandmother was a smallholder farmer and I always wondered why despite her hard work, she never really had a lot to show for it. It was to take several years for me to find out. When I got admission to University of Nigeria Nsukka to study Mechanical Engineering, she teased me, saying I was&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":69414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1737],"tags":[1771,1779],"class_list":["post-69393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-agtech","tag-precision-farming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bonjouridee.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bonjouridee.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bonjouridee.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonjouridee.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonjouridee.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69393"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonjouridee.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":213123,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonjouridee.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69393\/revisions\/213123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonjouridee.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bonjouridee.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonjouridee.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonjouridee.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}