Khula

Harvesting opportunities for small scale farmers.

KHULA has developed an app connecting small scale farmers with consumers, disrupting the supply chain with the aim of alleviating unemployment and poverty.

Why?

60% of the world’s arable land is in Africa*. Unsurprisingly, over half of all small businesses there are agriculture related, and in emerging markets such as India, Brazil and China, more than 2 billion people are small scale businesses and farmers too. These are often some of the world’s most vulnerable, with no opportunities to grow business or revenue.

We act as a virtual farm, managing all transportation and logistics and offering small farms alternative channels to generate sales. In essence, KHULA is a shared economy approach to farming, providing visibility and growing these businesses with their greatest resource—arable land. As a result, there are widespread employment opportunities within the communities that we operate.

Funding would allow us to…

We would use the funding for two things: growing our software team to accelerate the development of our technology and expanding our operations to all 9 provinces in South Africa, running pilots in two new African markets. KHULA’s rapid growth has come organically from our farmers, who are our greatest ambassadors. They refer us to other farmers in their area as well as consumers.

We have the potential to financially impact people’s lives and with hundreds of new farmers and buyers signing up, we need to meet this demand.

What’s your blend for success?

Doing good is at the core of our business model. We blend our team with our beneficiaries, working with many farmers who are only growing 10 bunches of spinach in a backyard garden. By blending with people on the ground, we are better able to solve the problem, refining our business model with feedback from thousands of users.

*World Economic Forum 2016