Making agricultural inputs accessible to small-scale farmers and agro-dealers through e-commerce.

The decision to commence the third sprint for this project was a great one. Our focus for this sprint was centered primarily on how to support agro-dealers and how to reach smallholder farmers, who may not have purchased agricultural inputs online before.

More Agro dealers

We kicked off with sourcing, registering, and onboarding more agro-dealers to the Konga platform to promote their products. Interestingly, we had a good turnout of dealers that were receptive to trying to sell their goods online and we were initially able to sign up about 12 more merchants — with 10 finally listing their products live on the website. This enabled more variety and competitive pricing for each seller.

As usual, the process still seemed new and strange to the agro-dealers, they were faced with the need to familiarize themselves with the new norm. In a bid to ensure that the challenges from our previous sprints were addressed upfront, we provided training sessions to the merchants, made some of our processes flexible (i.e the drop off process for items to be shipped by merchants, in some cases the time was extended, and we also assisted with picking up and dropping off, to enable items to get to the customers) and provided dedicated support to those who needed it.

More offerings and opportunities

To drive the value proposition of this project, we experimented with some opportunities for the agro-dealers to benefit from. These included:

• Warehousing: This was a chance to offer warehousing to selected merchants. The aim was to facilitate the effective processing of orders and faster delivery to customers. We believed that this opportunity would facilitate the ease of working for agro-dealers and provide more satisfaction for end-users.

Findings: We learned that some merchants who initially expressed an interest in warehousing later said they would need to see that they are able to yield sales before committing to this opportunity. Some merchants also were not so convinced as they were still used to selling their products offline and they felt that it would be difficult to have their stock tied up. Therefore we haven’t yet been able to test this value proposition yet but will continually follow up with those who have indicated an interest and continue to observe the sale trends.

• Online and Offline Promotion: We wanted to test whether recruiting individuals with vast knowledge of Agriculture as affiliates to promote the category online and offline could increase sales. We encouraged affiliates to promote the category while they also earned commissions. We aimed to register about 10 online affiliates to promote the agricultural category, however, we successfully registered about 34 from different parts of the country. As a category that was quite new to some of these promoters, during the course of the stipulated campaign period we had about 8 successful sales.

Activation was also conducted offline in select states to sensitize farmers and customers at the grassroots level on the value proposition and the benefits of selling or shopping for agricultural products online. It is great to say that both online and offline campaigns worked, however, more pressure would be put on the online affiliate promotion as this happened to yield more results and it was more targeted to the end-users. We would optimize the opportunities from our affiliates and support them to reach their goals.

• Bulk purchase: We utilized our B2B channels as well as introduced this opportunity to promote merchant’s products. This was considered a move of expansion; it meant more sales for agro-dealers and better pricing for the customers and the end-user farmers. Surprisingly, we received quite a number of requests and repeat purchases from some customers. We also experienced some consolidated purchases from some farmers.

Findings: This showed that having the right product(s) accessible to individuals would enable them to purchase. We observed the trends of products being purchased in large quantities, and they appeared to be mainly planting seeds and bio-organic fertilizers. A close-up relationship is currently being built with these specific customers and merchants who are able to meet their needs and requests.

How can we better manage and mitigate cancellations?

Managing cancellations were also a major focus for this sprint, we needed to understand the patterns as well as also to analyze our findings. It appeared that some of the reasons included customers’ change of mind after an order had been placed, some involved order modification as well. To control these, selected merchants had their stores as prepaid only (these stores were constantly monitored), we also ensured a strict verification process, where customers are contacted once an order is placed, to confirm all the necessary information provided are correct and the Konga team follows up to process the customer’s request.

These changes and initiatives certainly had a great positive effect on our internal processes, and also curbed the burden of orders being rejected upon delivery and long waits for products to be returned to the merchants.

As part of our commitment to always ensure customer satisfaction, we decided to run an NPS (Net Promoter Score) on this campaign to gather feedback from our customers on how they rate our services. The report showed that we were able to reach small-scale farmers, who used the products for their personal needs. The customers also stated some of the reasons why they preferred to shop online for the agricultural inputs including the ease and convenience of shopping online, the option of Payment on delivery, and the ability to save time.

Finally, it is worthy to note that these initiatives involved a lot of work as well as perseverance. This was certainly a learning curve and in all, it yielded commendable growth and results in agro-dealers growth, product assortment, customer growth, retention, and, most importantly revenue.

It is great to say that these offerings and processes still need constant optimization and awareness to bridge the gap.

As we continuously strive to solve daily problems, Konga will work towards ensuring agricultural inputs are accessible to buy and sell by small-scale farmers and agro-dealers with the use of technology. We look forward to continuously onboarding more merchants effectively, expanding the agricultural product category, seeing how we can even offer other agricultural initiatives like business financing, and also possible partnerships with other developmental bodies. We will at all cost carry on with the activities we piloted, and harness all possible opportunities, with the belief that the farmers who are able to purchase seedlings and other agricultural inputs through Konga’s platform can watch their crops grow, harvest them, and in turn sell these outputs once again on Konga.com. In 2025, we hope that Konga will be the number one platform for agricultural inputs and products.

Our success so far is evident that this is the future of agriculture!