EZ Farming, Nigerian-US agritech start-up pioneering expansion of smallholder farms to commercial sizes through micro lending has been selected for the batch 25 of the 500 Start-ups Accelerator Programme in San Francisco, United States.
The 500 start-ups accelerator programme provides $150,000 in funding, mentorship and hands-on training in a highly competitive programme, with attendees selected from different parts of the world.
A handful of start-ups from Egypt, Nigeria and other African small businesses made it to the four-month accelerator programme in San Francisco, California, USA.
Adewale Oparinde, founder of EZ Farming has pooled up to $1 million from investors around the world to invest in smallholder farmers in Nigeria and other African countries as well as providing a marketplace that thrives on using digital technology to address agribusiness challenges on the continent.
“We are excited to have made it to batch 25 of 500 start-ups accelerator programme. EZ Farming is a unique marketplace for smallholder farmers in Africa because we provide not just financing but use technology to provide technical support and connect them to buyers in a different way beyond ecommerce,” Oparinde said in a statement.
“This is a great opportunity for us to continue to improve our model and benefit from the bespoke opportunities the programme offers. 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 added.
EZ Farming got into the accelerator programme in the wake 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.
500 Startups is a renowned global accelerator programme, having worked with over 2,000 start-ups from across the world. It has 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.
Josephine Okojie
