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Executive column: Farmers need more than money, says CEO of agritech start-up Crowde
Agriculture peer-to-peer (P2P) lender Crowde provides farmers with seeds, equipment and training rather than cash, as CEO Yohanes Sugihtononugroho says that the platform aims to promote targeted loan use toward sustainable growth of farming as a business.
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Yohanes Sugihtononugroho is a cofounder and CEO of agriculture peer-to-peer (P2P) lending start-up Crowde, which provides noncash loans to smallholder farmers. (Courtesy of Crowde/-)
I
em>Indonesia is home to 33.4 million farmers, most of whom run small businesses with limited financial resources. A few start-ups are improving access to funds for farmers, but farmers need more than just money, according to agriculture start-up Crowde (www.crowde.co).
Crowde has provided noncash assistance totaling Rp 253.7 billion (US$17.77 million) in fertilizer, seeds and equipment, as well as long-term training, to tens of thousands of farmers since 2017.
The Jakarta Post’s Eisya A. Eloksari interviewed Crowde CEO Yohanes Sugihtononugroho on Sept. 24 to explore the start-up’s business model in a sector that seems nowhere near achieving its full potential. The following is an excerpt from the interview
Question: What inspired you to establish Crowde?
Answer: I became a farmer after graduating business school, but I was naive. I thought that being a farmer and living in the countryside would be nice. Turns out farming is not easy. I experienced crop failure and was a victim of fraud.
So although I did not have the talent to be a farmer, I still wanted to help them. I discovered that farmers, as part of the unbankable population, need financial support. There are also the challenges of middlemen and lack of access to farming facilities that I want to help them with, and that is why I established Crowde in 2015.
Could you tell us more about your business model, and why you opted for noncash loans?
