Organic Farming Platform iGrow Books Initial Funding from East Ventures and 500 Startups

Organic farming platform iGrow has announced the acquisition of seed funding, of an undisclosed amount, from East Ventures and 500 Startups. This funding will be used to support iGrow's mission to develop organic farming globally. Currently iGrow has managed 1000 hectares of agricultural land in Indonesia and is targeting agricultural land in Turkey and Japan for several types of agricultural products that are suitable for the land in that country.

iGrow was founded by Muhaimin Iqbal, Andreas Sanjaya, and Jim Oklahoma to connect sponsors/investors, farmers, landowners, and agricultural product buyers together. iGrow is a dropout acceleration program 500 Startups Batch 16.

iGrow CEO Andreas Senjaya in a release said, "We connect the 3 most important stakeholders in the world of agriculture: markets, skills, and capital. This model comprehensively utilizes unused land to grow organic crops, and at the same time empowers farmers to increase their income."

Andreas to DailySocial added, "We want to use it for planting expansion. Currently it is in 6 regions in Indonesia. We are also expanding to enter planting and markets in Turkey and Japan, product development, and operational."

Sponsors or investors can participate in at least 9 types of agricultural products that they are interested in with different investment schemes.

Chief Business Development Jim Oklahoma said Turkey was targeted because it was considered the most suitable for growing olives, while they are also in communication with local Japanese parties. In Indonesia alone, it is stated that there are 16 million unused land which makes opportunities in this sector wide open.

According to Organic Monitor data, the demand for organic food and beverage products reached $80 billion globally in 2014. This figure grew fivefold from 1999 to 2014 and shows a growing trend.

Current condition

Andreas told DailySocial that his party is working with land owners who have at least 10 hectares of land. Regarding the profit-sharing and profit-sharing scheme, Andreas stated that his party has divided the profit from the harvest three times, with an average profit obtained for 6 months reaching 9-12% or 18-24% per year.

As a platform that embraces many parties, Andreas said that his party educates the market by providing tangible evidence of the benefits that can be made by planting. iGrow also forms a community that gets the latest information about the programs being carried out.

Specifically regarding risk, because this investment involves public funds, Andreas emphasized that as resource integrator, they mitigate risk by spreading the risk to multiple parties, including sponsors and land owners, rather than owning the land and working on it alone.