Nigerian Agritech startup, EZFarming has been selected for the batch 25 of the 500 Startups accelerator programme in San Francisco, California.

Founded by Cambridge University-trained Nigerian agricultural economist, Dr. Adewale Oparinde, the startup wants to pioneer the expansion of smallholder farms to commercial sizes through microlending and easy access to produce buyers worldwide. Having pooled about $1 million from investors around the world to invest in smallholder farmers in Nigeria and other African countries—providing a marketplace that thrives on using digital technology to address agribusiness challenges in Africa, EZFarming is the only Nigerian startup in the accelerator programme.

Oparinde explained that the experience would be a great opportunity to improve operational models and learn from the tailored lessons from the programme. “We will continue to work with farmers to scale their farms to commercial sizes. We are confident that our time in this 4-month programme will sharpen our ability to stretch the limits and deliver more results to our various stakeholders,” he explained.

For EZFarming, this is another major win, as it is coming on the heels of clinching the first prize of $5000 and the peoples’ choice award at the 2019 Georgetown African Business Conference New Venture Competition, hosted by the Young African Professionals in Washington DC, at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.

The 500 startups accelerator programme provides $150,000 in funding, mentorship and hands-on training in a highly competitive accelerator programme, with attendees selected from different parts of the world. They have worked with over 2,000 startups from across the world and supported 10 tech unicorns (companies valued at $1 billion) including Twilio, SendGrid, and Credit Karma, Udemy, Grab and Canva. In addition to these 10 companies, 66 of its companies are valued at over $100M.




https://zumalo.com/agritech/ezfarming-selected-for-500-startups-batch-25-accelerator-programme-in-san-francisco/


cc: lalastica

how will the program benefit Nigerians back here at home?

I wish to know how I can benefit from this Pls. Thanks... deleadebukola@gmail.com