🌾 Good Business #18 • iFarmer

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How iFarmer turned farm data into 4% bank loans for 300,000 smallholder farmers in Bangladesh

The problem

• Bangladesh has about 16.5 million farmers, most smallholders with no land title or credit history

• About 70% lack formal financing, so they borrow from traders or loan sharks at 30-70% interest

• Without aggregation, farmers capture only about 40% of the retail price for their crops

• Without reliable inputs or advice, yields stay volatile and harvests go to waste

Invisible to banks.

The company

iFarmer

Founded 2018, Fahad Ifaz and Jamil M. Akbar, Bangladesh.

Ifaz spent a decade in agriculture finance and market development across South Asia, with roles at the World Bank and Swisscontact. He and Akbar launched iFarmer in 2018 to lease Dhaka rooftops to urban growers. Rooftop access in an apartment-heavy city killed that model within six months. In August 2018 they pivoted to financing, inputs, and market access for smallholder farmers nationwide.

• Partners with banks and NBFIs, including Mutual Trust Bank, BRAC Bank, Dhaka Bank, Prime Bank, UCB, EBL, IDLC, and Shahjalal Islami Bank, to channel formal loans to farmers

• Collects around 40 data points per farmer to build a credit profile banks can underwrite against

• Runs a retail network selling seed, fertiliser, and inputs to farmers

• Aggregates farmer produce through 700+ iFarmer Centres and resells to institutional buyers, wholesalers, and retailers

• Provides agronomic monitoring and advisory through its app

The impact model

• A roughly 40-point data profile lets a partner bank price a loan it previously couldn’t underwrite

• iFarmer’s commitment to buy the harvest acts as a collateral substitute, the reason a Mutual Trust Bank pilot hit near-100% timely repayment

• The 24,000-retailer input network puts quality seed and fertiliser within reach of farmers who used to buy on credit from informal dealers

• 700+ physical centres double as data collection points and produce depots in areas banks don’t reach

• Farmer count grew from 63,000 in 2022 to 300,000+ in 2026, a 5x increase

• Maps to SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) and SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth)

Why this business works economically

1. Banks hold the credit risk
   iFarmer doesn’t lend its own balance sheet. Partner banks disburse directly to farmers it has profiled and monitors, earning iFarmer origination, data, and monitoring fees without the credit exposure.

2. A buyback guarantee replaces collateral
   Farmers have no assets banks will accept as security. iFarmer’s promise to purchase the harvest functions as the guarantee instead, the reason a pilot priced loans at 4% with near-100% repayment.

3. Retail funds the data layer
   Every input sale through the 24,000-retailer network updates a farmer’s credit profile. Retail margin pays for the data collection the lending business depends on.

4. Aggregation captures the 60% gap
   Farmers traditionally keep about 40% of retail price. iFarmer’s 700+ centres move 12,000 tons of produce monthly direct to institutional buyers, capturing part of that spread.

5. Profitable before any equity round
   BDT 500+ crore turnover (about $45M), profitable by late 2023, on roughly $4.1M disclosed funding plus one undisclosed Series A. Credit risk sitting with banks keeps the model capital-light.

The numbers

• 300,000+ farmers on the platform as of April 2026, up from 63,000 in 2022

• 24,000 agricultural input retailers in the network

• $53.5 million in farmer financing facilitated as of September 2024

• 700+ iFarmer Centers reaching 150,000 farmers directly

• Farmers access bank loans at around 4% interest, versus 30-70% from informal lenders

• BDT 500+ crore annual turnover, profitable, as of November 2023

• $2.1M pre-Series A in May 2022, led by IDLC Venture Capital Fund

• Series A from Razor Capital, September 2024, amount undisclosed

• $500,000 three-year loan from Pioneer Facility, April 2025

• $1.5 million working-capital debt from Symbiotics, April 2026

Key insight

Bangladesh has high smartphone penetration but a banking system that can’t price 16.5 million smallholder farmers as borrowers. iFarmer’s actual product is the data: about 40 points per farmer, gathered through input sales, monitoring, and produce purchases, that banks use to underwrite loans they otherwise wouldn’t make. iFarmer doesn’t compete with banks. It manufactures their customer file.

Why incumbents missed this

• Banks underwrote land titles, business registration, or salaried income, none of which smallholder farmers have

• Microfinance institutions built for small group-liability loans, not input-heavy agricultural credit

• Input distributors and traders ran on cash sales and farmgate-to-retail spreads, with no incentive to track farmer data

• Seeing the gap meant treating data collection as the product, not a byproduct of lending or retail

• It meant building the supply chain infrastructure most fintechs avoid, because the buyback guarantee depends on it

Similar companies

• Apollo Agriculture: Kenyan agtech bundling credit, inputs, and insurance for smallholder farmers, underwritten with satellite and mobile data.

• Tulaa: Kenyan platform linking smallholder farmers to input financing and produce buyers through data-driven underwriting.

• Twiga Foods: Kenyan B2B produce distribution that extends inventory financing to informal retailers based on transaction data.

• FarMart: Indian agtech sourcing produce from smallholder farmers while bundling credit and input access.

Final thought

iFarmer’s product isn’t a loan, a bag of fertiliser, or a truckload of vegetables. It’s the credit file. Every input purchase, every monitored harvest, every repaid loan adds to a profile that didn’t exist six years ago. Banks get a customer segment they couldn’t price before; farmers get financing at a fraction of the informal rate. The supply chain and retail operations aren’t separate businesses. They’re the sensors that make lending possible.