GreenFingers Mobile Raises Second Round Of Funding And Brings On A New CEO
Having been on the periphery of the South African startup ecosystem, Agritech is starting to come to the fore. South Africa’s GreenFingers Mobile, piloted in 2013 has joined a select group of startups to make it past their beta phase and obtain the backing of a second round of funding.
Hivos Food & Lifestyle Fund has been involved with GreenFingers since their first official round of funding in 2017. Keith Wallace, senior investment manager of the fund describes GreenFinger’s role in the Agritech industry as pivotal to providing a platform that connects large food companies with smallholder farmers.
He added, “We are excited to again invest in GFM to allow it to achieve its ongoing mission to help smallholder farmers with a scalable technology solution that creates real impact in Southern Africa.” He particularly singled out their ability to work with real time data as being a crucial solution when creating ethical supply chains.
Natalie Miller, CEO, GreenFingers Mobile
Natalie has joined the GFM team to help the company execute on its mission to improve the livelihood of smallholder farmers (SHFs), support and measure sustainable agricultural practices and to enable a transparent supply chain. “I am excited to bring GFM to the next level and capitalize on the learnings from our existing client base. We have an exciting vision for our future product which we will begin developing in-house”, Miller says.
The appeal behind GreenFingers is its ability to adapt to different crop types and use cases. This not only allows them to reach farmers across the board but in addition to replacing paper based systems; the platform allows farmers to manage their profiles, track commercial exchanges, monitor field extension staff, and crunch all this data on a digital platform to ensure that effective and timely technical assistance is provided in the field.
