Your own clients can help in Funding the existing business. Discussion & Feedback.

Hello everyone,

What is your opinion on the platform I’m building:

  • The main goal is to help farmers to raise money through the community (clients). It’s like crowdfunding but way more straightforward and more advantageous.
  • The second goal is to continue to engage the community after the fundraising and transform the participants into co-investors, influencers, advocates, etc., to impact the revenue.

Basically, we think if the farmer develops the community around his products, it will positively impact his revenue.

We had a couple of very successful cases in Estonia and were considering extending to the UK and other directions as well

Do you find community building & community funding relevant to you?

Do you think you can spare more time for community building, client engagement, storytelling about your product, etc.? I know farmers are very busy!

I’d be very glad to get the feedback and open for any discussion with you guys.

Welcome to FarmNest!

Your idea seems much like a CSA - Community Supported Agriculture?
I am aware there are many CSAs in the US where end users buy or commit for a part of the production in advance, with the farmer producing as per the user preference.

In India where most of the farmer members of this forum reside, there are very few CSAs. Some of the challenges are to have a basket of products that end customers would need, the high level of risks in farming around here in addition to having to manage diverse interests of multiple customers. I am aware of some enterprises that distribute a pre-selected basket of fruits and vegetables through the year for a one time payment.

Most setups disconnect the production part (including the funding) and instead tend to tie up for dedicated marketing of the produce to housing societies and apartments.

For us personally, the community building, client engagement and story telling is something we do for retailing our produce; we go by a produce and sell model and don’t seek funding.

It would be great to hear how you envision your model.

Hey Chandra, very nice to see your response.

This is not necessary for CSA to be honest, basically any business small or medium might need funding, for various reasons - opening a new branch, purchasing a new equipment, launching a huge marketing campaign, etc.

We have quite a few example when farmers where is need of funds in order to continue their business, but when they came with this request to bank , bank refused to give a loan, or offered way less amount with way less attractive options. Hence they came to the services we offer. Basically they’ve used their own community to get the funding, a lot of clients were very sad due the news about their fav product is in a risky situation, and this was the turn, the Chicken farm issued the NFTs, client purchased the NFT’s, business remain and now even growing. So the fact that active community helped the business to remain and sustain is the fact, and this is only one business story example.

For us it is very interesting to discover the business who might have the same need? Who can convert their own community and customers into investors within their own social media and website. Would be cool to get a few people on the interview, to get a deeper understanding of how does other farmers think in this direction.

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