Innovation

CROWDE was established in 2015 which resulted from the need to improve the welfare of farmers in Indonesia. So many farmers in Indonesia are below the poverty line. This is caused by the system of farmer's management that must be done through the middleman for the crops to be sold in the market. "In addition, many Indonesian farmers do not have the capital and land to work on." In fact, the agricultural sector is one area that helped build the economy of Indonesia from the first to the present, even into the future. Our co-founders, Yohanes Sugihtononugroho and Muhammad Risyad Ganis, initiated a platform to raise funds from the community as working capital for farmers. With the crowd-lending method, CROWDE operates as a capital platform that manages community funds channeled to farmer projects. "The results of the farmer's project will be returned to the community with capital value based on profit-sharing scheme." CROWDE is here to help farmers as well as become an educational platform for capital. CROWDE is working to empower farmers towards Agropreneurs. "In an effort to improve the welfare of farmers, CROWDE is here to create an efficient agricultural ecosystem." CROWDE also continuously strives to become a platform of agricultural capital in a spirit of mutual help and trust.

Inspiration

The story of CROWDE based on the interviews are as follows. "It all started in college, I was assigned to the countryside to help out street vendors, initially I do not really like living in the village, and however I am comfortable living in the city. But finally while living in the village, I got cases, there is a mother who has 3 children and has been abandoned by her husband. The challenge is how we help this mother without her having to get out of the house, so she can takes care of her children. We think on how to do that, and finally we find that in the village area is suitable for planting white oyster mushrooms and we prepare for the rack. So every 8 o'clock in the morning the mother is spraying and at 9 am there are people ready to collect the harvest, and pay right away, so it's very easy to do by herself. After 6 months the mother calls and informs that she will add the rack so that the results will be multiplied and the most important according to the mother is the first child can continue to go to school,and I personally love this quote. “Never give up and do what you like because it is not worth it to live this life if you do what you do not like, if you keep doing it, it's the same as not enjoying life.” Yohanes Sugihtononugroho, May 2018

Overall impact

Technological advances are so massive, bringing a new platform in providing assistance as well as investment for Indonesian farmers. In fact, it can be done through a touch of a smartphone. As it is known that agricultural land began to be critical with the prevailing development trend today. Then agricultural industrialization must be changed, in order to develop it from the upstream to downstream process. Often, the bottleneck for farmers to develop their commodities is the insufficient capital. So through CROWDE -P2P Lending, it is easier for anyone to invest in growing capital among farmers.

Business benefit

With the growing business demonstrated by the massive growth of the number of investors every year, it is not impossible in the next few years that the start up CROWDE will have a Start Up with Unicorn extinguished status. Of course this will also bring blessings not only for CROWDE itself but also the pride of the Indonesian nation.

Social and environmental benefit

Today, the proportion of our farmers reaches 41% and half of those are still living below the poverty line, that's why the no poverty goal is so important for farmers and the next impact towards economic growth. Is there an example of real and direct evidence? Every month we calculate the social impact, for examples, how many farmers have we helped and with the ecosystem we created? The percentage of farmers' with an increased income every month reaches 50-100%

Interviews

Yohanes Sugihtononugroho, CEO & Co-Founder

Karina Ananta, Head of Business Development

Karina Ananta, Head of Business Development