SC Ventures, the fintech, investment, and ventures arm of Standard Chartered, has launched Tawi, a B2B agritech marketplace aimed at facilitating secure e-commerce transactions for smallholder farmers in Kenya. Tawi seeks to offer farmers a consistent and viable market, efficient supply chain management, and price transparency.
Tawi founder and CEO, Cherotich Rutto, said that the platform will connect farmers to a market opportunity estimated at KES 200 billion (US$1.6 billion). The platform aims to help farmers improve crop quality, scale, and make the food and agriculture value chain more sustainable. It will source fresh produce directly from farmers and ensure that at least 25 percent of the farmers it partners with are women and youth, in line with promoting diversity and inclusion.
SC Ventures started incubating Tawi in 2022 to address smallholder farmers’ challenges, including lack of viable marketplaces that result in post-harvest losses, poor quality produce, and fragmented supply chains due to inappropriate infrastructure and too many middlemen. Since Tawi started testing the platform in February, it has onboarded over 1,000 farmers, 250 commercial kitchens, and fulfilled over 1,000 deliveries.
Tawi is starting off by supplying commercial kitchens, which represent around US$210 million (KES 28 billion) in consistent and predictable market opportunity. The commercial kitchens can order fresh produce directly on the platform, and Tawi’s logistic team will collect the produce from the farm and deliver it within 12 to 18 hours. By improving delivery efficiency, commercial kitchens can also use the produce for longer and reduce food wastage.
The agritech platform has adopted a phased approach to building its marketplace and business model. In the future, Tawi plans to embed financial services, including loans and micro-insurance, and value-added services such as offering agronomic support for best agricultural practices.
Jiten Arora, Member, SC Ventures, said that they are delighted with the launch of Tawi, a fintech that understands that agriculture is more than just a business — it’s a way of life rooted in community, hard work, and dedication. He added that like SC Ventures, Tawi believes in the power of partnerships to drive success and growth for partners and business.
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Alex Manson, Member, SC Ventures, said that they incubate new business models and new ventures with the ambition to rewire the DNA in banking to solve real-world problems. He added that they are proud to have incubated Tawi, which will help transform and make the agriculture and food value chain more sustainable from farm to fork. Manson also welcomed Tawi as an addition to SC Ventures’ ecosystem and looks forward to exploring more ways of improving financial inclusion for farmers in Kenya and beyond.
Tawi platform Tawi platform
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