Nigerian startup Farmcrowdy acquires Best Foods, and plans to roll out retail meat hubs in Q2 2020. The deal value has not been disclosed. The business will serve over 50 meat markets south west Nigeria and manage over 100 consumer pick up points.
Farmcrowdy was founded in 2016. In December 2017 Farmcrowdy raised $1m from investors including Techstars, Cox Ventures and Social Capital. It subsequently secured an additional $1m of funding from Techstars, Cox Ventures and local investor Ajayi Solutions.
It describes itself as Nigeria’s first Digital Agriculture Platform, focused on connecting farm sponsors with real farmers. Its model is to use its farm sponsors’ funds to buy land and farming tools, and to insure farmers. By March 2019 it claimed to work with 12,000 farmers across 14 states.
It currently says it works with 25,000 farmers, and has plans to scale up to 50,000 farmers. Its business model operates on a revenue split system for sponsorships: a farm sponsor gains their capital plus 40% of profits; the farmer takes 40% of profits; Farmcrowdy takes 20%.
Best Foods L&P is an agribusiness group set up 16 years ago. It processes of livestock and markets agricultural produce. The company is one of the largest meat processors in Lagos and has the capacity to process 120 to 200 bulls a day.
The acquisition will see Farmcrowdy look to leverage Best Foods to increase Farmcrowdy’s capacity for processing bulls from 45 a day to 120. Consumers will be able to order meat via Farmcrowdy’s platform for collection at one of its pick up points.
