Wikifarmer raises large Seed Round from world-class investors

Wikifarmer, a platform with the mission of empowering farmers through educating them and offering them access to the open market to sell their products at fair prices and cited as the 'Wikipedia of Farming' by the FAO of the UN, has successfully completed a Seed financing round with the support of a group of investors such as Mathias Kamprad, Inter IKEA BoD, Patrick and Cynthia Odier of the Lombard Odier Private Bank, Sophia Bendz, venture capitalist and former Spotify global director of marketing, Alexandre Vilgrain, C.E.O. of SOMDIAA group, the Constantakopoulos foundation and with the participation of Metavallon Venture Capital, a leading Greek VC firm.

Agriculture is still one of the least digitized industries in the world and this has not allowed the industry’s value chain to be disrupted, but instead has created a paradox; farmers are the most valuable part of agriculture’s value chain but make the least profit out of it. In addition to that, most farmers are still using the techniques of their ancestors to grow their crops. The need for up-to-date sustainable agriculture knowledge has never been greater in the world than today.

Wikifarmer’s platform allows farmers to access free up to date knowledge on agricultural best practices and gives them the opportunity to sell their products directly to businesses, helping them minimize or surpass the large number of intermediaries that currently exist. Wikifarmer is aiming to become the universal source for farmers searching for information and the go-to destination for people seeking to purchase agricultural products globally.

Co-founders Ilias Sousis, Peter Sagos and Harry Parianos were inspired by the negative impact that outdated practices in agriculture have on the environment, global hunger and the financial sustainability of farmers. At the same time, helping farmers make a higher profit margin out of their commercial activities will have a wider impact on the economy and on the quality of products produced.

Sousis has been a part of the management team of Google Greece for years, leading the commercial launch of YouTube in Greece and Cyprus and has had prior entrepreneurial experience in traditional commerce, while Sagos is a passionate agronomist with deep knowledge in agricultural production and a business background as he was running a seeds trading family business. Parianos is the owner and CEO of McCann Athens and has spent more than 30 years as a senior leader in the advertising industry.

Wikifarmer’s library and marketplace has already been visited by 12 million visitors from more than 200 countries while 30,000 products have been uploaded by farmers. More than 5,000 buyers - including food processing units (FMCGs, food-services, etc), wholesalers/importers, retail stores and hotels/restaurants - have purchased a product directly from a farm.

The investment will be used to expand the educational content to 20 languages and to enhance Wikifarmer’s marketplace presence in Greece, Italy, France and Spain, with the objective to create a Mediterranean hub of farmers that will attract buyers from all over the world, establishing the platform in a leading place globally.

"We want to democratize agriculture, give farmers around the world the chance to learn new things and thus the opportunity to grow their capabilities, their crops, their earnings," Sagos said. "This is the only way forward to make this sector more sustainable and feed the growing world population."

"I am thrilled that a group of very important and sustainability-conscious world-class investors are sharing our vision and efforts to solve some of the biggest pain points that have troubled the sector of agriculture for hundreds of years now," concluded Sousis.