Farmers in South Africa can now access cutting-edge farm management solutions thanks to FarmTrace, a cloud-based agritech solution that has received a significant investment from Secha Capital and Hassium Capital. The FarmTrace software provides farmers with a diverse range of tools to manage their operations, making it the only cloud-based farm management tool of its kind in the country.
The software allows farmers to monitor and control their operations from anywhere in the world, providing an accurate and holistic live view of their entire farming operation. This helps improve yields, increase efficiencies across all aspects of the farm, and reduces food waste, thereby positioning farmers’ operations profitably for generations to come.
Brendan Mullen, the managing director of Secha Capital, praised FarmTrace for developing a solution that addressed the key pain points in farming operations. He contrasted the company with others that treated agriculture as a homogenous sector, adding that FarmTrace is built with the farmer in mind.
Hassium Capital managing director, Howard Saffy, expressed his excitement at being part of the growth of FarmTrace in South Africa and beyond, highlighting the company’s achievements in building a highly satisfied client base across a variety of horticulture crops.
Farmers have also expressed delight in the customization offered by the system, which fits into their existing processes, rather than forcing them to change what they have already developed.
Jacques du Plessis, FarmTrace co-founder and CEO, said, “FarmTrace started in 2015 and we have boot-strapped exponential growth by working intimately with our clients to solve their needs. We have a long backlog of interested farms, so we decided to raise capital to accelerate our growth and meet the needs of more farmers by hiring additional software developers, engineers, project managers, and implementation consultants.”
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Werner Lategan, FarmTrace co-founder and COO, added that with the investment, the company would bring about the next wave of farming cost savings, yield and efficiency improvements. The company plans to serve more farms, more products, and more geographies, helping farms grow sustainably and profitably.
With modern farming evolving rapidly, the latest data on farms has become increasingly important to modern farm managers. Thanks to FarmTrace, South African farmers now have access to the latest technologies to help them keep up with demand, changes in best practices, and regulations.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard