November Updates: A Summary Of Thrive Agric’s Progress.
The following sections cover Thrive Agric’s progress and updates since the last subscriber meeting held on 9 & 10 October 2020. The November subscriber meetings held on Friday and Saturday, 6 & 7 November 2020, on a live Zoom call led by Adia Sowho, CEO and Ayo Arikawe, co-founder of Thrive Agric.
Why has Thrive Agric been unable to pay subscribers
Thrive Agric is behind on subscriber payouts because of the significant negative effects COVID-19 had on agricultural businesses in Nigeria. The subsequent movement restrictions coincided with the start of our dry season operations and halted vital aspects of business operations.
The combination of expensive and limited access to inputs, restricted distribution, and constrained markets caused reduced harvest quality and quantity, losses in crops and livestock consequent of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions created a ripple effect through our operations, affecting critical revenue-generating events.
Thrive Agric continues through its turnaround and maintains a firm commitment to paying out all subscribers.
When will subscribers get paid?
The payout timelines are available at payout.thriveagric.com.
It is important to note that subscriber payouts due in April, May, June, July and August have been made. This is massive progress and a sign of good faith to all our subscribers that pending subscriptions will be fully paid: Capital and Returns.
As of today, 9th of November 2020, Thrive Agric pending payouts are due from September 2020, and we have begun making these payouts in steps. To clarify, some subscribers in September have received payments, and we are continuing to make these payments in batches. We firmly believe we’ll correct the effects of the pandemic and emerge a stronger company moving forward.
I’m due in September, October, November, but haven’t received my payout.
We are doing everything to make payouts happen as fast as possible, this is an urgent priority for us. To make this possible, we are aggregating all debts, inflows, and outflows to prioritize all subscribers payouts. We have also raised bridge funds via institutional investors who recognize our track record to hasten these repayments.
We are now making payouts in batches based on farm subscription due-months. A subscriber due in September will be paid alongside other September subscribers regardless of the exact due date. After September subscribers are paid or refinanced, October payouts will commence and so on.
We have created and shared a payout queue portal for pending subscribers to view their payout month commencement and also their queue number within the month. You can find this payout queue at payout.thriveagric.com. To use this dashboard, you need your associated Thrive Agric email address and the order number for your specific subscription. If you have trouble using the dashboard, please watch this short demo video.
Subscribers have heard that Thrive Agric is showing preferential treatment to some subscribers by calling them directly. Is this true?
In addition to the monthly zoom calls, Thrive Agric has made two sets of calls to subscribers.
One set of calls were to the 50 largest subscribers with extensive subscription portfolios. We have had refinancing and rescheduling conversations with these subscribers so that we are able to pay more individual subscribers. It is important to note that the majority of these 50 subscribers are institutional investors.
The second set of calls we made were to 14 subscribers who reached out to us with evidence of urgent health emergencies. Although we were making payouts with the payout schedule in order of maturity months, we thought it human to make a concession to these subscribers. We will however, not make any more of these emergency payouts because we have seen the disruption it causes to other pending subscribers who consider it preferential treatment. We will strictly stick to the payout queue.
What is Thrive Agric doing to guarantee future investment regardless of economic changes?
Within the business, we are restructuring revenue and risk management processes. We have brought in experienced management personnel to tighten business operations to prevent a future occurrence of this ongoing challenge with late payouts. Further, crowdfunding is on an indefinite pause as has been since mid-April 2020
Why is payment on a first investor first serve basis rather than restricting losses only to farms directly affected by COVID-19?
Because of the pandemic’s damaging effects, Thrive Agric had to aggregate all debts, inflows and outflows to remain in business, correct the damages, and payout all subscribers.
We had to restructure internally to create this payment queue that ensures that Thrive Agric fulfills commitments to all pending subscribers and continues its mission to feed the nation. Without aligning subscriptions the way we have, Thrive Agric would be unable to maintain commitment to all pending subscribers and the business is able, with a slight delay, able to meet its obligations to all subscribers rather than a few.
Will there be a compensation for the additional time Thrive Agric holds subscribers’ money?
We are restoring our business to full recovery as each harvest comes in, hence we can only commit to paying subscribers their capital plus returns as at when initially due.
However, we understand that under normal circumstances, subscribers’ funds would have earned more returns, and we commit to a 10% per annum pro-rated interest to any subscriber whose pending payouts becomes overdue by 120 days from their original farm subscription due dates.
This is our best foot forward, and we hope to beat the time estimates we have shared with you even as we continue to make these payouts as fast as possible.
A humble request from Thrive Agric
We know it has been difficult going through this with us, and we deeply understand the frustrations subscribers with pending payments feel. For us, it has been difficult to place what we are now experiencing side by side with our past performance: serving all subscribers with dignity, reliability, trust.
None of us could have predicted the toll COVID-19 would have on our business, and by the time we put in corrective measures, we were already late on payouts, and more factors moved quickly out of our control. Scrambling to piece the business together left us making mistakes with communicating proactively and coherently. We were striving to solve the problems before involving you, the subscribers.
Thrive Agric is not unnecessarily holding on to subscribers’ funds. This business was seriously impacted by the COVID-19 Pandemic which led to widespread farm revenue losses. Now, we are making progress restoring the business to full functioning: we have restructured the team, built improved and extensive risk management structures, activated pre-selling of December harvests, and opened up more revenue opportunities for the business. This is to support our main priority of paying out all pending subscribers. This is what we are working relentlessly to achieve.
We sincerely thank all who attend our monthly meetings and support us through these times. We are humbled by your continued belief in us and our mission to create an economically resilient and food secure Africa, one farmer at a time.
As we continue to make these payouts to everyone and rebuild our reputation, we hope our answers show our commitment to maintaining transparency and honoring commitments to all subscribers.
If you are a Thrive Agric subscriber who has questions not answered, please email hello@thriveagric.com. Our next meeting will be in December. We will send Zoom meeting registration links via email.
Thank you.
A prosperous Africa begins with you, let’s do more for our Farmers. Visit thriveagric.com to get started. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram,Facebook,LinkedIn and subscribe to our YouTube Channel to see our work improving the lives of local farmers in Nigeria and how we are building to ensure food security in Africa, one farmer at a time.
