Apollo Agriculture, the Kenyan agritech startup, has closed a $40 million Series B funding in an equity round led by Softbank Vision Fund 2.
Its latest funding round included participation from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Yara Growth Ventures, Endeavor Catalyst, CDC, and existing investors including Anthemis Exponential Ventures, Flourish Ventures, Leaps by Bayer, SBI, Breyer Capital, and TO Ventures Food.
With the investment, Apollo plans to double the number of farmers it is serving by the end 2022 and to introduce other products that deliver more value per acre of land.
Founded in 2016 by Eli Polla, Benjamin Njenga and Earl St Sauver, Apollo helps farmers in emerging markets maximize their profits by using agronomic machine learning, remote sensing, and mobile phones to deliver a customized package of credit, high-quality farm inputs, and advice that can double farm yields, starting in Kenya. Apollo assesses farmer credit risk and customizes each package to a farmer’s specific location using satellite data, soil data, farmer behaviour data, and crop yield models. One of its products include insurance – which is offered by its partners including Pula, the Kenya-based insurtech.
The startup claimed that at the end of last year, the agritech startup had worked with 100,000 farmers, with plans to double the reach by the end of this year. It has a network of “over a thousand” retailers and 5,000 agents spread across the country.
The agents onboard farmers to the Apollo while retailers use the startup’s “checkout app” to handle point of sale, inventory, source wholesale orders and as access to trade credit.
Since the close of a $6 million series A in 2020, Pollak said Apollo has grown 10 times, accelerated by product financing. The agritech has also received over $16 million in debt-funding over the years for onward lending.
Apollo Agriculture co-founder and CEO, Eli Pollak, said: “We are continuing to invest in growing fast; serving more farmers, helping them grow their acreage and really hitting the acceleration on the business. And so that’ll be both continued expansion across Kenya but also expansion into new markets.”
SoftBank Investment investment director, Alexia Yannopoulos, said, “in the face of sustained macroeconomic and geopolitical volatility, feeding the world is one of the most important challenges facing society. Apollo’s platform offers a one stop shop solution to help small-scale farmers in emerging regions to improve crop and livestock outputs. Embedding valuable financial services like credit, insurance and advice into the supply chain is critical in supporting a more efficient and sustainable global food chain.”
