The South African agri-tech company swiftVEE has unveiled a brand-new programme dubbed PrysWys.
The instrument is intended to assist farmers in lowering the costs of their inputs. PrysWys capitalises on swiftVee’s established customer base, which consists of about 100,000 commercial farmers, to trade cattle online.
The software offers its users a digital request form that farmers may use to specify a variety of products required for their farming operation and then obtain electronic cost estimates.
Before the end of 2022, swiftVee began testing PrysWys in beta, and the platform already has over a thousand active users.
The business has made online sales reaching several million rands since it initially went live in January 2023.
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swiftVEE CEO Gives More Details
Russel Luck, CEO of swiftVEE said, “PrysWys was developed to curb the rising input costs for farmers in the current economic climate.”
With success in online livestock selling, they realised that farmers pay excessive input prices at brick-and-mortar stores. They think typical input supply is bloated. Farmers buying supplies from retailers pay for shop space, storage, staff, and inefficient manual processes. This adds 50% to inputs before the retailer adds their margin. Most farmers pay high input prices due to rising petrol prices and product scarcity from the Ukrainian war. Digital technology is their preferred solution.
In the words of the CEO, “Following our success in the online livestock trading space, we have noticed that farmers pay high premiums for their inputs at brick-and-mortar retailers. We believe there is a lot of unnecessary bloat in the traditional supply of inputs. Your average farmer purchasing inputs from retailers absorbs the costs of retail space, storage facilities, staff overheads and inefficient manual processes.”
“This can add 50 per cent onto the supply of inputs before the retailer has even added their margin. Rising petrol prices and product scarcity caused by the war in Ukraine has aggravated the high input prices paid by most farmers. We believe digital technology is the best way to solve this problem.”
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About swiftVEE
swiftVEE is an online platform that holds real-time auctions of livestock. The company was established in 2019 and was chosen for the Google Launchpad Africa accelerator in the same year. This young company has already conducted more than 150 auctions, and it has 125,000 farmers participating in its network.
swiftVEE makes use of artificial intelligence (AI) to match buyers and sellers of livestock from anywhere in the world. This helps purchasers obtain livestock at the most ideal periods. After securing the money, swiftVEE wants to extend its usage of AI.
The company successfully completed a funding round in the amount of $1.5 million US dollars in the year 2020. The company intended to use the money to grow its platform and enter more neighbouring nations.
The investment of US$1.5 million comes from the unlisted private company Subtropico, which operates in the food industry. This funding will also be utilised to assist the startup in expanding into Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe.
Russel Luck, chief executive officer (CEO) of swiftVEE said, “The future of food security is understanding the production cycle of livestock from farm-to-fork, and this is our next major focus. There has been an interest expressed to have our operations expand overseas, and we’d like to go into the United Kingdom (UK) and United States (US) and apply machine learning solutions to foreign markets.”
