CNN is set to air a 30-minute program that explores Bangladesh’s preparations for sustainable economic and environmental growth. The program, titled “Growing Bangladesh”, will examine how Bangladeshi innovators are finding localised solutions to the country’s core challenges, such as flood-resistant homes and solar-powered pay-as-you-go microgrids, according to a press release of CNN International. Marina Tabassum, an award-winning Bangladeshi architect famed for her landmark designs such as Swadhinata Stambha at Suhrawardy Udyan, is featured in the CNN program. Tabassum bases the majority of her initiatives in Bangladesh, drawing on the country’s rich history, culture, and needs, with an emphasis on improving homes and lives. Read More: Marina Tabassum scoops Lisbon Lifetime Achievement Award Aiming at climate change mitigation, she is developing flatpack bamboo homes for those affected by flooding. Her work seeks to make a difference and embrace social responsibility while celebrating the heritage of Bangladesh. “Growing Bangladesh” also features Fahad Ifaz, the co-founder of iFarmer. With nearly half of the country’s population employed in agriculture and more than 70 percent of its land used for farming, Fahad and his friends founded the initiative in 2019 with the goal of transforming the agricultural sector. iFarmer seeks to increase farmers’ income and productivity by providing bundled services for finance, timely advisory services, education, modern farming technology, and access to inputs and appropriate markets. With more than 87,000 farmers registered on the platform, the company has transformed Bangladesh’s agricultural sector by facilitating the sale of nearly 190,000 tonnes of produce and facilitating more than $19 million in funding assistance for farmers throughout the country, according to the CNN press release. Read More: Sofol App from iFarmer: A Revolution Towards the Agriculture Digitization Salma Islam, head of projects, fundraising, and communications at SOLshare, a start-up hoping to kickstart the electric vehicle (EV) revolution in Bangladesh is among the “changemakers” who are featured in the program. CNN’s “Growing Bangladesh” also features Rokaiya Ahmed Purna, one of the country’s leading fashion designers who seek to revolutionise Bangladesh’s readymade garment industry by unleashing the country’s creativity. Purna’s ‘Design in Bangladesh’ platform – to be launched later this year – aims to turn the tables and conceptualize the idea of “Designed in Bangladesh” instead of “Made in Bangladesh”. Her platform will provide opportunities for Bangladeshi designers and she hopes that this will demonstrate the country’s creative prowess to the world and garner international recognition for Bangladeshi designs. Read More: Bangladeshi Marina Tabassum in Aga Khan Award for Architecture’s Steering Committee During the 30-minute show, CNN also talks to Taslima Miji, the founder of Leatherina, a manufacturer of leather products. The company is committed to making a difference in the leather industry by procuring responsibly and reducing waste and designs many of its bags in-house. The show will air at 11 am and 9 pm Bangladeshi time on April 1.

iFarmer, a full-stack agriculture platform providing agri-based services to farmers, has recently raised $2.1 million (more than Tk 18 crore) in a new financing round, maintaining its accelerated growth.  IDLC Venture Capital Fund, the VC arm of IDLC Finance, led the financing round. Millville Opportunities, a hedge fund firm based in New York, participated in the round. Startup Bangladesh Limited, the flagship venture capital fund of the ICT Ministry, also participated in the financing round, said a media release.  According to the release, Bangladesh has about 16.5m farmers, and almost 80% are smallholders. The biggest challenges for farmers in Bangladesh are securing finance and good quality Agricultural inputs such as seeds, pesticides, fertilizers, etc., and then finding buyers to sell their produce.  Also Read: IDLC introduces Bangladesh's 1st MFS-based digital savings programme iFarmer, which started its operations in 2019, is the largest agri-tech company in the country, offering solutions to these problems at scale. iFarmer facilitates retail and institutional funders to finance the farmers and enables access to high-quality agri-inputs through a partnership with companies and retailers. This, in turn, creates better market access for the farmers by aggregating products from the farmers and selling those to institutional buyers, retailers, and the wholesale markets. "We are currently operating in 19 districts in Bangladesh - serving close to 63,000 more farmers, up from about 6,000 farmers in 2020", says Fahad Ifaz, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, iFarmer. Jamil M Akbar, Co-Founder, and COO, iFarmer, said, "When we started supplying farm produce in June 2020, our monthly volume was around 50+ tons. Now it's almost 8000+ tons. Every day, we aggregate produce from farmers and supply it to the market."  Read Sofol App from iFarmer: A Revolution Towards the Agriculture Digitization "The IDLC Venture Capital Fund I aim to finance promising new businesses which are solving fundamental problems for Bangladesh. We are excited that iFarmer is unlocking the true potential of the agriculture sector through technology at scale. It is using innovation to enable farmers all across Bangladesh, and we believe they are solving the most crucial problems in the industry's supply chain", said Mustafizur Khan, Partner, IDLC VC 1. Alejandro Montealegre, the Managing Partner of Millville Opportunities, said, "iFarmer has proven that it can significantly improve the lives of farmers while bringing efficiency to the agri supply chain. We are excited to back iFarmer as they are working to transform the agriculture sector that is critical to the economy of Bangladesh." Read Agro-Tech Startups in Bangladesh: Tech revolution in Agriculture Sector

Bangladesh has always been an agrarian country. Agriculture is still the largest sector when it comes to employment with over 42.7% of the labor somehow related to agriculture. The sector also accounts for over 12% of the GDP share. Yet traditionality has always preceded innovation in this sector. Some steps have been taken to modernize the existing agricultural systems in the country. However, the impact and coverage weren’t enough to have a uniform impact. Different startups are trying to solve the underlying issues that plague the farmers and the agricultural sector. While some focus on specialized needs, others take a more holistic approach. Let's look at some Agro-Tech Startups bringing about changes to the existing process.  The Emerging Agro-Tech Start-Ups in Bangladesh  iFarmer Ltd  Farmers in Bangladesh face accessibility issues regarding capital, market, and other agricultural development inputs. iFarmer Ltd took a holistic approach to address these issues for the root-level farmers.  The startup was founded in 2008 in Dhaka. Initially, the organization focused on solving the Agri capital issue. Gradually they widened the horizon to include a marketplace as well as developmental input for the farmers. Today the organization has over 36000 registered farmers under its platform.  Read Sofol App from iFarmer: A Revolution Towards the Agriculture Digitization The organization has a unique voucher system that they provide to the farmers instead of direct cash. So far, the organization has been able to disseminate 745 million BDT worth of funding to the farmers. The investments have yielded over 1.1 billion BDT worth of agricultural produce.  The company has been primarily funded by the Falcon Network and Accelerating Asia. The voucher system allowed for better investment strategies. This in turn allowed the organization to see consistent growth. iFarmer also took steps to set up its own supply chain system to bypass the middlemen. The marketplace system allows the farmer to directly connect with the buyers which in turn allows for better profit.  Fashol.com  Fashol.com is another Bangladeshi agro-tech startup focusing on the wholesale agricultural market. Price discrimination in the wholesale market has always plagued the farmers. While fresh produce skyrockets in retail now and then, the farmers seldom get the actual price for their produce.  Read:Agricultural Loans in Bangladesh: Banks Offering Loans to Farmers and Farms Fashol.com works to bring about a change to that system. Founded in 2019, the startup has created its supply chain with over 500 retailers serving over 350 different types of fresh produce.  The company takes an all-around approach from sourcing to sorting to delivery. This approach has had a very positive impact. The company directly delivers the products free of cost to the customers. The price is also substantially less than the retail market since there is virtually no middlemen involved.  The agricultural supply chain of Bangladesh is lengthy. This backdated process has been intertwined with multiple third-party involvements. The change of hands or involvement of middlemen at every stage only adds up to the final cost of the product which is making both the consumer and the farmer worse off.  Fashol.com is taking steps in the right direction and bringing better value across the spectrum.  Read:Best Business Ideas Amidst the Pandemic and New Normal iPAGE Ltd  Integrated Precision Agriculture and Engineering Bangladesh or simply iPAGE is another agri-tech startup in Bangladesh.  The platform primarily works to develop the root farmers of Bangladesh. 

Started in 2018, Agricultural fintech company iFarmer has been working to connect small farmers with investors. Besides, it also provides advice to the livestock farmers and helps to sell the product by connecting with the wholesale buyers. The iFarmer begins its journey with the goal to make easy availability of the supply and financing in the agricultural sector of Bangladesh. Currently, Bangladesh has around 20 million small-scale farmers who do not have access to credit or investment. Eighty percent of the money our farmers receive comes from microfinance or unofficial sources. The interest rate on their loans is higher too. Financially, farmers are not interested in investing in high-quality agricultural inputs, which will help them in production, such as seeds, pesticides, etc. In addition, farmers have to sell their products through three or four levels of intermediaries to reach the buyer in the market. As a result, farmers have to lose a large part of the profits. Considering the facts and about these issues, 'iFarmer' started their journey. Recently iFarmer developed an app for the farmers and farm beneficiaries (different farms including fish, cows, goats are called farm facilitators beneficiaries) to digitize (or digitalize, in Bangladesh the terms tend to be used interchangeably) agriculture and empower the farmers. Read: The SWAP story of Bangladesh's first reCommerce startup What is Sofol App? Sofol is a pilot program that should be used by the farmers. But since the Bangladeshi farmers have little or no knowledge about the internet and smartphone, it works via a facilitator. The goal of the Sofol app is to collect the farmers' data, collect the financing requirements, distribute the money among the farmers, support and follow up after disbursement, share weather updates, and other relevant issues using the IoT (Internet of Things). The app was launched on September 15, 2020, by appointing 5 Facilitators from Nilphamari, Kurigram, and Lalmonirhat. Since the beginning of Sofol, more than 5000 farmers have registered on Sofol via the facilitators. The Sofol app uses human agents, remote sensing, and mobile technology to reduce the farming cost and complexity for smallholder farmers. Read: An Overview of Shuttle: A Promising Mass Transit Startup in Bangladesh How does Sofol Work? Sofol works in a few steps. Firstly, the appointed facilitator will collect the data from the farmers and put them in the app. The facilitator will collect the respective farmer's NID to verify in real-time through the Bangladesh Government's Porichoy Database. After the verification, the facilitator will fill the KYC form for farmers in the Sofol app, and an automated score shows up assessing farmers' financial capability. After that, the app will look for the finances from the iFarmer's database. Then farmers will produce the product and send it to the marketplace through the iFarmer supply chain process. And finally, the funders will get the return on their investment. This is a continuous process; the iFarmer will look for the financiers again and continue the process. Read 20 Most Promising Education Start-Ups in Bangladesh Features iFarmer and Sofol are jointly working towards building a digitalized agriculture in the country. Although Sofol is running a pilot program, it offers some astonishing features. Let's find out the features one by one. KYC and Loan Application Through the Sofol app, a farmer can get their identity verified and apply for the loan accordingly. The facilitator will update the farmers' asset information to help them to apply for credit and get approval. The loan application will work based on the data provided by the customer. Weather Update Since the Sofol app is farmers-centric, it aims to boost the farmers' productivity and safety. Therefore, iFarmer added weather update features in the app. As a result, the farmer will get updates on any upcoming hostile weather. The app starts geo-mapping the area when the registered farmers live and eventually measures the probability of heavy rainfall or even the flood. The app will then send the updates to the facilitators as well as to the farmers to take precautions. Read: Entrepreneur Vs Wantrepreneur: 8 Ways to Tell Them Apart Data Collection The Sofol collects a wide range of data. Through the KYC form, it collects around 40 data points from the farmers measuring the socio-economic condition, financial info, personal information, behavioral info, and more. The detailed profile of a farmer is created based on the collected data. Alongside some additional data, the app eventually creates a strong credit scoring model. The app has already built a detailed credit scoring model using the existing data, which is currently activated in Natore and Pabna as a pilot program. It collaborates with the Mutual Trust Bank and Prime Bank in Pabna and Natore. Further, iFarmer helps these two banks find 200 eligible farmers to offer loans. However, the credit scoring system is nothing but a decision-making tool for financial organizations to find the right farmer. Read Top 5 Mobile Apps for Farmers in Bangladesh Follow Up The follow-up model in the Sofol app will allow the company to get updates on farmers regularly and take proper steps to improve the outcomes. However, the app will advise the farmers about the crop density, fertility, etc., through the follow-up by using the collected data. Assessing the Land With the collected data iFarmer can also assess the land and study the expected yield along with the yield history. It helps the financers to take the decision while financing on that particular land. To have the proper measurement, iFarmer also gathers data from the satellite of a certain area about the crop history of the past few years, the density of the crops, soil fertility, etc. Thus, these data can help to identify the high-yielding and profitable crops. Read: Top 7 Truck Rental Apps in Bangladesh Challenges Since the rural farmers don't have the proper education or access to the smartphone and internet, the facilitators always need to stay connected with the farmer. Besides, the app works online, so having no internet or poor internet will not actually make the app working. So, the iFarmer is seeking to make the app work offline. The Future of Sofol App In the near future, Sofol will get focused on interacting with farmers and make a good relationship. So that farmer can get instant advice by posting a photo of their crops. Furthermore, the app will seek to work more efficiently with less human intervention. According to the iFarmer, it will launch some new features in the next few months and eventually deploy a full-fledged version at the end of 2021. Read LPG Growth in Bangladesh: Effective Alternative to Natural Gas