How JR Farms is Digitising Their Agro-Business.

JR Farms, a leading agribusiness, is transforming Agriculture in Africa by operationalising sustainable food production in Africa. With operations in Nigeria, Rwanda, Zambia and Netherlands respectively, the agribusiness is embarking on full digitisation of their product and service distribution.

In Nigeria, the company deals in cassava value chain processing cassava to national staple “garri” which is consumed by over 80 million Nigerians on daily basis. Through a cassava processing factory, they serve markets in South-West and North Central Nigeria.

In Rwanda, JR Farms operates a coffee production factory where it roasts, packages and exports coffee to different parts of the world and in Zambia, a livestock feed factory as well as a coffee shops littered around the metropolis.

Through user research and an understanding the production landscape, JR Farms understood that the specific distribution goals were not being met because of their brick-and-mortar framework of operations. So they started to sample different methods of selling online but were met with unique challenges. Olawale Rotimi Opeyemi, Founder and CEO of JR Farms explains, “We have tried to digitize our market-front in the past which was challenging because we were not able to find a reliable and sufficient platform to market our products to customers digitally across Nigeria and beyond in a safe and secure way with good user experience.”

JR Farms chose to leverage Zest's multi-rail payment platform and suite of APIs to deploy an enterprise-ready mobile app. Using Zest Payment Gateway, JR Farms was able to launch their mobile with a wallet system that users can fund and buy all of the organic agro-products avaialble on the mobile app. “With Zest, we are able to digitize our market front, put our products online for our customers to buy and make payments with ease.” Olawale said, speaking about the mobile app the company has integrated with Zest.

Olawale spoke about how this integration has helped JR farms to drastically reduce waiting time in their coffee shops thereby improving customer experience. Customers can also make payments directly from their mobile app, whether through card-based payments, transfer, QR or USSD.

This has enhanced ease of service across all the shops and most especially, allowed a new network of serviceable online customers. “Through the mobile app, customers can make orders, pay and load their wallets without any issue,” he added.

JR Farms plans to open more coffee shops across Lagos, Abuja and major cities in Nigeria and beyond and to intensify the use of its mobile app to sustain its customer experience and overall offering to its customers.

Want to join other smart businesses like JR Farms building innovative products, collecting payments seamlessly and simplifying their business operations with Zest? Click here to get started or contact us.