#55: Apollo Agriculture - How the AgriTech platform is supporting smallholder farmers to scale across Kenya & Africa
Afrobility: Africa Tech and Business - A podcast by Olumide Ogunsanwo and Bankole Makanju
Categorie:
Overview: Today, we’re going to talk about Apollo Agriculture, the Kenyan AgTech company - we’ll explore the Apollo story across the following areas
- African agriculture context
- Apollo's launch & early history
- Product & monetization strategy
- Competitive positioning & exit options
- Overall outlook
This episode was recorded on Aug 21, 2022
Companies discussed: Apollo Agriculture, The Climate Corporation (WeatherBill), Pula, FarmDrive, Monsanto, FairMoney & Kuda Bank
Business concepts discussed: Agricultural Technology (AgriTech or AgTech), smallholder farmers, Risk mitigation, Debt funding, Customer acquisition costs (CAC) & Customer lifetime value (LTV, CLV)
Conversation highlights:
- (06:10) - Agriculture context in Africa
- (21:00) - Context on Agriculture in Kenya
- (27:33) - Apollo founding story and founder background
- (40:55) - Fundraising and growth
- (55:14) - Product and monetization strategy
- (1:17:58) - Competition and exit options
- (1:27:53) - Bankole’s overall thoughts and outlook
- (1:34:50) - Olumide’s overall thoughts and outlook
- (1:49:36) - Recommendations and small wins
Olumide’s recommendations & small wins:
- Interested in investing in Africa Tech with Olumide: Read about Adamantium fund & contact me at [email protected]
- Founders looking for funding: If you're a B2B founder working on Education, Health, Finance or food, please contact me for funding at [email protected]
- Recommendation: Little Ways The World Works: Article by Morgan Housel. Great article talking about how learning from different fields is very helpful. He goes over learnings from evolution, astronomy, biology, anatomy, etc
- Recommendation: University of Berkshire Hathaway: Auto recommended by Kindle. Great. Chronicles 30 years of Berkshire Hathaway Annual meeting discussions
- Small win: Beach gathering with friends, it was fun
- Small win: Just got back from NYC 30 minutes before recording this episode, a lot of fun
Bankole’s recommendations & small wins:
- Recommendation: Soul In The Game - Vitaly Katsenelson && Asake - Terminator && For My Hand - Burna Boy and Ed Sheeran
- Small win: Beat my previous Readwise streak of 190 days!
- Other content: CIA Factbook on Kenya, FAOStat Food production, Interdependence and modularity - Christensen institute , All I Want To Know Is Where I'm Going To Die So I'll Never Go There: Buffett & Munger – A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon, Common Sense
Investors, Operators, Entrepreneurs - We’d love to hear from you. Please email [email protected] to share feedback
