Agricultural Investment Platform "Crowde" Releases Application, Aims for 100 Thousand Farmers to Get Capital

Crowde, an agricultural investment platform, launched a special application to make it easier for investors to provide loans to farmers. Through this application, investors can easily choose the project they want to fund and then monitor the investment results.

"This year we want to increase the number of farmers who are helped through additional capital. One way is through the launch of this application, investors can invest starting from a value of IDR 10," explained Crowde CEO Yohanes Sugihtononugroho, Thursday (25/1).

This year, continued Yohanes, his party wants to help up to 100 thousand farmers throughout Indonesia. This figure is up from the previous achievement of 50 thousand farmers in 276 villages spread across five islands. The realization value of the distribution is expected to reach Rp. 100 billion, up from the previous Rp. 15 billion.

Meanwhile, the total number of investors that the company wants to gather can reach 30 thousand to 50 thousand investors, up from the previous 10 thousand investors. Crowde offers investors a yield of around 15,6% on an average yearly basis.

"In addition, we will also increase the number of partners with many cooperatives and universities, to help us in terms of controlling and monitoring the farmers themselves."

In addition to helping with monitoring, these partners will be a bridge that can bring Crowde together with farmers. However, not all projects can enter the Crowde platform. This is because they have to go through the KYC process, starting from verifying the business profile, risks, and the profile of the farmers themselves.

"We want to make sure whether the farmer is really serious about his job. Moreover, so far we have not used insurance services to protect farmers' businesses, as well as protect the investment risk itself. We plan to immediately use insurance to guarantee farmers and investors."

Regarding the need for fresh funds, Yohanes said that his party is currently opening this option. However, the focus has not been in that direction because the company still has the remaining funds from the previous fundraising results.

He revealed Crowde had received investment from angel investors UMG Indonesia worth US$70 thousand in 2016.