#55: Apollo Agriculture - How the AgriTech platform is supporting smallholder farmers to scale across Kenya & Africa

Afrobility: Africa Tech and Business

Overview: Today, we’re going to talk about Apollo Agriculture, the Kenyan AgTech company - we’ll explore the Apollo story across the following areas

1. African agriculture context
2. Apollo's launch & early history
3. Product & monetization strategy
4. Competitive positioning & exit options
5. Overall outlook

This episode was recorded on Aug 21, 2022

Companies discussed: Apollo Agriculture, The Climate Corporation (WeatherBill), Pula, FarmDrive, Monsanto, FairMoney & Kuda Bank

Business concepts discussed: Agricultural Technology (AgriTech or AgTech), smallholder farmers, Risk mitigation, Debt funding, Customer acquisition costs (CAC) & Customer lifetime value (LTV, CLV)

Conversation highlights:

• (06:10) - Agriculture context in Africa
• (21:00) - Context on Agriculture in Kenya
• (27:33) - Apollo founding story and founder background
• (40:55) - Fundraising and growth
• (55:14) - Product and monetization strategy
• (1:17:58) - Competition and exit options
• (1:27:53) - Bankole’s overall thoughts and outlook
• (1:34:50) - Olumide’s overall thoughts and outlook
• (1:49:36) - Recommendations and small wins

Olumide’s recommendations & small wins:

• Interested in investing in Africa Tech with Olumide: Read about Adamantium fund & contact me at [email protected]
• Founders looking for funding: If you're a B2B founder working on Education, Health, Finance or food, please contact me for funding at [email protected]
• Recommendation: Little Ways The World Works: Article by Morgan Housel. Great article talking about how learning from different fields is very helpful. He goes over learnings from evolution, astronomy, biology, anatomy, etc
• Recommendation: University of Berkshire Hathaway: Auto recommended by Kindle. Great. Chronicles 30 years of Berkshire Hathaway Annual meeting discussions
• Small win: Beach gathering with friends, it was fun
• Small win: Just got back from NYC 30 minutes before recording this episode, a lot of fun

Bankole’s recommendations & small wins:

• Recommendation: Soul In The Game - Vitaly Katsenelson && Asake - Terminator && For My Hand - Burna Boy and Ed Sheeran
• Small win: Beat my previous Readwise streak of 190 days!
• Other content: CIA Factbook on Kenya, FAOStat Food production, Interdependence and modularity - Christensen institute , All I Want To Know Is Where I'm Going To Die So I'll Never Go There: Buffett & Munger – A Study in Simplicity and Uncommon, Common Sense

Investors, Operators, Entrepreneurs - We’d love to hear from you. Please email [email protected] to share feedback