Planting the seeds of success

• Success is systemically elusive to smallholder farmers — access to quality seedlings and fertilizer is exclusive to large enterprise farms, leaving them with poorer quality seeds and soil, and consequently, lower quality yields.
• Disrupting the order of things is 500-backed Elevarm, which secured US$2.6M in Seed funding from 500 Global, Insignia Ventures Partners, and Gibran Huzaifah, CEO and founder of Asia’s first aquaculture technology startup, and 500-backed company eFishery.
• The goal? Providing access to affordable high quality farming essentials, such as seedlings and organic fertilizer to improve yields and income for smallholder farmers.
• Elevarm has big plans with the fresh capital. They aim to scale their seedlings and organic fertilizer production capacity by 3x to meet growing demand, as well as advance NextBio, Elevarm’s research and development (R&D) arm dedicated to developing new products for improving biodiversity, soil health, and ecosystem resilience.
• The team will also collaborate with new research institutions and strategic partners to engineer affordable, deeptech horticulture solutions tailored to unique local challenges at different stages of the farming journey. Elevarm has15 new organic products in the pipeline for this year.
• Elevarm has a growing base of 13,000+ agricultural partners and 5,000+ active farmers as customers. The team shared that they recorded strong year-on-year growth with 2023 revenue up 7x from the previous year.
• “We see incredible value in uplifting our local smallholder farmers, the backbone that makes up half of Indonesia’s entire farming industry. Our mission is to democratize access to farming essentials that not only boost crop yields for them, but contribute to the circular economy in the long run, through our proprietary research, technology, and solutions,” shared Co-founder & CEO Bayu Syerli Rachmat.
• Read the full story on TechNode Global.