Tarfin, a digital agriculture platform that offers quick and flexible financing options to farmers through a Point of Sale (POS) network, announced today that it has raised USD $8 million in a Pre-Series B bridge round of financing. The round welcomed Yara Growth Ventures (the venture capital arm of Norway-based Yara), which is one of the world's largest fertilizer manufacturers, and saw participation from existing investors Quona Capital, Elevator Ventures (Raiffeisen Bank's venture capital fund), Syngenta Group Ventures (the venture capital fund of Syngenta Group, one of the world's leading seed and pesticide manufacturers), Collective Spark Fund and Dubai-based Wamda. The funding will be used to strengthen Tarfin’s offerings to farmers in Turkey and fund expansion in Romania.
"This investment is an important proof that scale-based value can be built by using technology in small-scale agriculture", said Mehmet Memecan, founder and CEO of Tarfin. "It will be an important driving force between reaching out to more farmers in Turkey and expanding abroad from Romania."
Tarfin, founded in 2017 in Northeastern Turkey, now provides services throughout the country with its wide agri-dealer network and digital infrastructure, combining traditional supply channels, technology and financial resources. Farmers can compare different price alternatives on Tarfin Mobile and instantly purchase fertilizers, seeds and chemicals with convenient post-harvest payment terms. At Tarfin, farmers find competitive prices as well as the speed of the digital world.
Today Tarfin provides farmers with easy access to agri-inputs through more than 800 partner points of sale in more than 70 cities. To date, the company has supplied and financed over USD $8 million in agricultural inputs to 32,000 farmers.
“We believe in the power of technology and data science when it comes to better servicing the needs of farmers. We plan to use this latest USD $8 million funding in expanding our software development and data science teams, finance the launch of our Romanian operations and invest in new value-added products and services for our farmers and partner agri-dealers” said Memecan.
“One of the things that we like about Tarfin is the critical role they play in providing farmers and agri-dealers with the financing they need to grow their businesses,” said George Roche of Yara Growth Ventures. “By being an enabler of credit through an easy to use experience and competitive interest rates, Tarfin has tremendous potential to layer on new offerings to both agri-dealers and farmers directly.”
