PIC CAPTION: Samuel Munguti is the co-founder and CEO at Shamba Pride, a Kenyan agri-tech startup that is changing the lives of smallholder farmers in Kenya with its one-stop shop interactive digital platform. Image: Supplied / Shamba Pride
Shamba Pride, a Kenyan based startup is revolutionizing the East African country’s rural agriculture trade ecosystem for African farmers, ushering them into the continent’s digital economy. Since ancient times, agriculture continues to be deeply embedded in the fabric and history of Africa’s economic activities as a continent that can feed itself is free. Samuel Munguti, co-founder and CEO at Shamba Pride shares a few seeds of wisdom and knowledge with AfricArena’s Jabulile Sonya Ngwenya about Africa’s agricultural leap forward into the future.
Munguti shares that he was born in a farming community, which shaped his experiences, outlook on life and honed his strategic insights. It also paved the groundwork for his entrepreneurial aspirations to uplift the farmer community in Kenya and across Africa. “I always had first hand experience of smallholder farmers and always dreamt of coming back to the community to help fight the challenges farmers face,” he says with a beaming smile.
When he was able to, Munguti left his farming community to pursue an education in business and marketing and he entered the exciting, high-paced world of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), where he spent a decade working for conglomerates such as Coca-Cola, Colgate Palmolive and L’Oréal. “Working for these companies saw me managing their last-mile supply chains and distribution networks, and I gained a good understanding of how the industry works, especially from an operational perspective and insight in how strategic leadership works.”
Munguti’s FMCG background set the foundation for his future startup endeavours and bold moves in raising funds for his vision. He laughs, and says, “Comparing the super great supply chains in the FMCG companies inspired me to do something. I felt that streamlining the agrovet ecosystem would have ripple effects on food security and rural economic empowerment.” This experience, he tells AfricArena, inspired him to conceptualize and launch Shamba Pride, first as a solo founder, and eventually as a co-founder. Out of the bedrock of the FMCG industry, Shamba Pride, a movement was born.
“The Shamba Pride platform helps agro-dealers formalize their businesses in terms of record keeping, inventory management, stock sourcing, and financial management, among other tasks,” says Munguti. “To ensure a holistic transformation, Shamba Pride is also aggressively engaging training in areas like business management and marketing, which helps in terms of improving visibility.
As Africa’s agricultural ecosystem undergoes seismic changes, Munguti says, “One thing is for certain, agricultural activity has, throughout the ages, seen technological advancements, and today’s digital economy is no less as farmers across Africa navigate agriculture’s digital leap forward into agritech.”
Building an interactive, customer-friendly digital platform is easier said than done. “The most critical aspect of the digital platform is connecting the local input retailers to manufacturers and wholesalers, something that guarantees quality inputs at competitive rates; the benefits of this connection are then passed down to farmers,” says Munguti. He shares that this challenge was solved “through a simple interface, farmers can order for inputs, request for extension service, market linkages and access buy-now-pay-later financial services.”
Earlier this year, Munguti showcased Shamba Pride to investors at the AfriArena Johannesburg Deep Tech & AI, Enterprise and Green Economy Summit and scooped up the AfricArena Most Promising Entrepreneur Award. This award, Munguti says, did much to boost Shamba Pride’s morale and determination to succeed in the midst of a funding winter. “Winning the AfricArena Most Promising Entrepreneur Award has raised Shamba Pride’s bar and investor appetite with lots of investors reaching out for potential investment opportunities. This has also come with massive Shamba Pride awareness both locally in Kenya, across the continent and globally.”
Munguti founded Shamba Pride in 2016, and he shares that operating a startup during the 2020 pandemic saw him and his team face difficult moments, particularly when sourcing funds to keep the startup afloat and give hope to the farming community. He recalls that “some early covid-19 effects were delayed projected fundraise targets that the company had aimed at to expand impact and business. In addition there was disruption of traditional farmer training and education methods like demonstration farm training, disruption of the agri-input supply chain with some products out of stock and increased liquidity pressures as most suppliers started adjusting to cash on delivery trade terms.”
It was not easy, he exclaims, but the team persevered. A typical day in Munguti’s day-to-day life sees him start his day reviewing an assortment of reports. “My day starts with reviewing team lead reports then providing follow up support to senior teams based on the report shared,” he says. “I also get time to meet investors, suppliers and of course, I always make sure I spare time to join my family early.”
He shares that navigating the covid-pandemic was not easy as the startup’s day-to-day operations were challenging. “Shamba Pride’s operations continued through the covid-19 period with lots of these constraints working in favour of the business model. With onset of covid-19, Shamba Pride started noticing a gradual spike in sales at DigiShop level and orders generated from DigiShops, resulting in month on month increased revenues. This could be as a result of many people in urban areas who lost their job and moved back to villages to do farming as a source of income and form of employment.”
Reflecting on the turbulent times people experienced during the pandemic, Munguti adds, “a second opportunity the team saw as a result of covid-19 is increased digital powered purchases of inputs with increased adoption of technology and other DigiShops starting to offer home delivery services in partnership with local Boda Boda (motorbike taxi) service providers.”
In hindsight, the disruption caused by the pandemic helped Shamba Pride to break through with its online service offerings, and Munguti’s FMCG background kicked in. “The covid-19 disruption on traditional delivery of farmer training and extension through demonstration farm training and through group gathering trainings, systematically changed how agriculture services are delivered to farmers at the last mile.” He smiles, acknowledging that his last-mile expertise helped him to shape his startup into what it is today. “Shamba Pride has continued making improvements in its DigiShop technology to take lead in driving farmer training and extension through a digital platform. The company believes digital driven extension is more sustainable, convenient, efficient, and less costly.”
Shamba Pride had an initial startup capital injection of $20,000 which the company won at a D-Prize global distribution challenge and these funds played a key role in Shamba Pride’s pilot phase. Munguti recalls that the results that came out of their initial pilot phase was “a defining moment for us as we saw Shamba Pride roll out a pilot that validated that stores joining the DigiShop network reported doubling sales, net revenue and farmer traffic by the sixth month after conversion and helped them to save on average 10% on product purchase prices.” This was a memorable moment, he shares as “farmers serviced by the DigiShops record on average a 40% increase in farm harvest translating to 40% income increase through DigiShop intervention with 80% of the impacted farmers being women.”
It is humbling, Munguti shares, to see how the Shamba Pride platform is making an incredible difference to farmers, and levelling the field for women in agriculture.
However, this wasn’t the largest amount of funds the startup has raised to date. As early as January this year, Shamba Pride raised $3.7 million in a pre Series A round from the EU agriculture financing initiative EDFI AgriFI and Seedstars Africa Ventures. Munguti says that “with the new capital, Shamba Pride hopes to further its business of putting digital tools into agro-dealers hands to enable greater control of their businesses and better support for farmers.”
Reflecting on what his team’s biggest challenges are, Munguti touches on an aspect of running a startup that many founders can relate to: “Raising capital is the biggest challenge. I always make sure I allocate sufficient time to speak with as many potential investors as possible.”
Shamba Pride has big goals to raise larger amounts of funding this year, even in the midst of a challenging funding winter. “We are launching our $7 million Series A round in October 2024. We are currently open to conversations on the round with interested investors. The funds will support Shamba Pride expansion to Uganda, Zambia and Tanzania as well support aggressive growth in Kenya.”
While the funding winter may have negatively impacted Africa’s agritech landscape, with several agritech startups downsizing their teams and scaling down their ambitions expansion plans, Shamba Pride refuses to entertain any notions of the funding winter holding them back from success.
“We are focused now on optimising our growth around a growth strategy that focuses on Shamba Pride’s four growth pillars, namely DigiShop expansion, market linkage growth, BNPL and key accounts,” Mugunti says. “We believe we will be able to demonstrate to potential investors and stakeholders that Shamba Pride is on a strong path to commercial and social impact sustainability.”
“The best advice I ever received from a mentor,” Munguti says, “is to never lose focus on the goal. Have that unicorn spirit every day as you build Shamba Pride and one day you will take the business there.”
Agritech, Munguti says, “is a great potential space but also a very challenging environment, especially when marshalling product uptake among farming populations.” He advises founders who want to enter the agritech space that they must have “patience, resilience and the right spirit” in order to succeed in this sector.
Looking towards the future, Munguti shares his future plans with AfricArena, saying that he is looking to “exit at an optimum time and have maximum return for founders and investors.”
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