Daktaripap Solutions: Connecting Farmers And Agricultural Service Providers

Daktaripap Solutions is a Mobile, Web and SMS technology platform connecting rural farmers and agro dealers to credible and affordable veterinary, agronomy and insurance service providers. Farmers are connected on demand to the nearest vetted and credible service provider; either vet, agronomist or insurance agent. They also have access to Daktaripap Finance depending on problem presented.

The famer downloads the app and registers to the service. The app interface has four sections: Daktari wa Mimea (Agrononomist), Daktari wa Mifugo (Vet), Insurance Agent and Daktaripap Finance (Innovative finance product targeting rural farmers).

The farmer choses the appropriate interface depending on their need. The app then launches a map view activity on Google Maps showing the nearest service provider (similar to Uber). The farmer clicks on the nearest service provider. The app will prompt the famer to confirm the service requested and make a call to the service provider. If an onsite visit is needed, the nearest service provider will attend to the farmer within a promised turnaround time of less than 1hr.  For financial matters, the famer clicks on the Daktaripap Finance icon which works like other loaning apps but with products designed to meet the needs of rural small scale farmers.

Upon accepting the service, anyone who cancels will be charged an inconvenience fee. The service provider is charged a 15% commission for a successful connection.
Daktaripap Solutions is available throughout the country. The company aims to connect farmers with service providers in their local area anywhere across Kenya. According to Daktaripap, in the next 5 years they target to have 1million farmers and 10,000 service providers in the platform before they begin expansion and replication of the model across other Africa countries.
The biggest challenge the company has faced thus far has been raising funds. According to Daktaripap their current fundraising seed round targets to raise USD 400k from Fintech companies , banks ,development organizations or venture capital funds.
From their experience, two pieces of advice Daktaripap can give to budding entrepreneurs is that there is no right time or age to start an enterprise. One should start immediately you notice a real need to be solved in the market. Secondly, do not measure success by profit alone but also by social impact.