Saukhya Gumidyala
Emily Mills
Ian Drummond
Case Western Reserve University - Weatherhead School of Management
Michael Goldberg
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The innovation of Ninayo is in the supply visibility, demand visibility and logistical coordination that it provides to the rural, smaller holder, East African farmer in infrastructure-poor areas. Ninayo simultaneously addresses SDGs 1, 2, 8, 9, and 10 (No Poverty, No Hunger, Good Jobs and Economy Growth, Innovation and Infrastructure, and Reduced Inequalities).
The tools and technology that Ninayo employs (i.e., the internet, websites, and mobile brick phones) to achieve these things are not new. However, their application to the buying and selling of agricultural products in an area of the world where access to the internet has exploded in the last decade is entirely novel. By giving rural farmers access to a larger marketplace (demand visibility); helping buyers find these farmers (supply visibility); eradicating the informational asymmetry between savvy buyers and uneducated sellers through price transparency (the product of supply-side information and demand-side information being visible to everyone); as well as coordinating the physical exchange of goods (logistical coordination of the sale), Ninayo is helping to address the issues of poverty, hunger, lack economic activity, and inequality.
The Ninayo website explains that (paraphrased) 'buyers don’t know what crops farmers are selling, farmers don’t know how much buyers are willing to pay, and lack of logistical coordination between the two skyrockets costs and reduces sales'. In addition, in an area of the world where rates of malnutrition and poverty are high, it is a sad fact that up to 30% of crops grown will rot on the vine due to the problems mentioned above.
Rural farmers make more money, buyers of all kinds buy more crops (fairly), both of which lead to the easing of poverty and malnutrition, and to the reduction of inequality.
By facilitating the matching of the buyer and the seller as well as the transaction of the sale, Ninayo takes a small percentage of the transaction, thereby making money.
As explained above, Ninayo increases economic activity between buyers and sellers of agricultural products in a fair and transparent manner thereby relieving poverty and hunger. Where before two parties had the desire to transact, but could not, Ninayo provides the ability to do so in a completely transparent way.
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Jack Langworthy, CEO
Did you know that over 30% of food rots in Tanzania, while malnutrition and poverty run rampant? NINAYO.com is a two-sided marketplace for agriculture in East Africa that connects farmers with buyers of their crops. The average Ninayo user is a small holder farmer with an average annual income of less than $1000 who both struggles to find a buyer for their crop (supply visibility) and to figure out what price to charge for it (demand visibility). With mobile phone and SMS integration, Ninayo provides these rural farmers with a way to advertise their crops to a broader marketplace and to make their pricing transparent which helps them avoid being exploited by predatory distributors who capitalize on the their limited local buyer network.