Startup Pitch - 3.1 Billion Last Mile People Need a Relevant Super App

Over 2-billion smallholder farmers, fisherfolk, and their communities are the most financially and technologically excluded people on the planet. They suffer on a daily basis due to trust issues that people in developed nations solved a century ago and nowadays take for granted. In April 2016, AgUnity commenced operations with a goal of using technology to assist the world’s most vulnerable smallholder farmers, fisherfolk and their communities. These communities face constant challenges including crop spoilage, poor planning, corruption, unreliable record keeping, a lack of equipment and restricted market access. These farmers also have no access to any financing (e.g. microloans) that would allow them to purchase better quality seeds or rent farming machinery. Finally, these farmers have very limited access to information on modern best farming practices, or how to get the most out of their land. AgUnity first designed a digital solution that dealt with the immediate issues of a lack of trust by enabling secure, immutable peer-to-peer transactions. Progressively, we evolved beyond recording basic farm and industry records to our current AgUnity v3 App and ‘Axsari OS’ platform. The Axsari OS platform allows for the deployment of the AgUnity App as well as hundreds of other applets, where Service Providers can build on top of the technology and services of our platform (a ‘Super App’ ecosystem). This Super App ecosystem brings billions of non-digital transactions online, and provides a simple, transparent way for millions of Service Providers to reach new users.
Who is this presentation for?
Impact Investors & VCs
Prerequisite knowledge:
None
What you'll learn?
How your impact investment can generate a positive ROI through providing a technology platform that can help smallholder farmers lift themselves out of poverty.

Founder AgUnity, FAC Global Agripreneur of the Year 2018, working on UN SDG’s, elimination of Poverty and increasing smallholder farmer incomes. Enjoying the most exciting and fulfilling time of my life. AgUnity is a philanthropic venture applying blockchain and smartphone technology to improve the lives of small farmer cooperatives in developing countries. Widely recognized by major NGO's and winner of many AgTech and Philanthropy awards and accolades. We are running projects in Africa, Asia and the Pacific with a lot more on the way, growing the team, refining the application and most importantly changing farmer lives in a profound way. Agreum will introduce a revolutionary mechanism for transparency in charity and direct investment. Before this I had over a decade in senior roles at global investment banks (Goldman Sachs, Lehman, Nomura & SCB). In between banking, I was the founder CEO of successful startups in FinTech SaaS and mobile technology (back in 2001 when mobile was very new). I was previously also a regular panelist, speaker or presenter at regional or global financial industry events: WFIC 2013, WFIC 2015, APFIC 2010-2015, Cloud Data Expo 2013/4, Big Data World Expo 2014/5, Trading Architecture Sing/Japan 2011-2015, FISD Japan/Sing/Aust/Europe 2012-2015, Asian Banker Summit 2013, Data Centre World 2014 However none of the past achievements compares to the life changing work we are doing with AgUnity.