Grekkon Limited, a Kenyan irrigation company that offers tailored irrigation systems to small holder farmers in Africa has raised un undisclosed amount of funding from Danish impact funders. The company is also known for providing smallholder farmers greenhouses, solar water pumps, solar dryers and dam lining services through its network of branches in Kenya.
Grekkon Limited started operations in 2017 with an office located in the capital; Nairobi. Its vision was to provide bespoke affordable irrigation systems to small holder farmers in Africa, who were struggling to access these technologies from large well-established irrigation firms, that mainly focused on large scale growers in the country. Besides irrigation, the company established a fully-fledged agronomy division to train these farmers free of charge to up their productivity. This was a first by any irrigation company, and it is done through physical farm visits. Over the years, the company has opened five more branches in Kisumu, Eldoret, Nyeri, Nyahururu, and Meru in Kenya in a bid to reach the growing number of farmers seeking these services.
This is why then after two years from its establishment, the company won the coveted Most Preferred Irrigation Systems Company of the Year award in 2019, at the prestigious Agribusiness Excellence Awards ceremony. The farmers in their votes had finally spoken! In the same event, the company was voted as the runner up to the Most Preferred Greenhouse Systems Company of the Year 2019 award.
Team
The company’s co-founders Erastus Matete and Wamae Mwangi are agronomy professionals who previously worked in global agricultural multinationals on the continent in various capacities. These are Monsanto (now Bayer), Yara, OCP- Africa and Timac Agro international
The company’s resounding success is largely due to its team of field professionals who provide engineering, commercial, and technical services. In a first in the irrigation market, Grekkon Limited organizes ‘training days’ in various regions of the country where growers come to learn of new and existing technologies. This knowledge sharing module has proved effective in addressing basic irrigation challenges that farmers go through, and creating trust in the company’s expertise.
Innovation
Grekkon Limited was the first irrigation systems company in eastern Africa to introduce the rain hose irrigation system. This new product solved many irrigation challenges for commercial vegetable and corn farmers. Adopted from India, then localised for small holder farmers in Africa, the system addresses the challenge of crops that cannot be irrigated using the drip irrigation system, yet cumbersome or ineffective to use the sprinkler irrigation system. It is priced similarly to the overhead irrigation system, popular with these farmers.
Value addition to agricultural produce through affordable natural solar dryers. The company is the market leader in research, design, development and commercialization of natural solar dryers. Each unit designed to meet the product or market drying requirements. Today, Grekkon Limited is the largest supplier of natural solar dryers within the east Africa community states.
The Future
With this funding, the company is better equipped to serve the growing number of small-scale farmers Africa. Its priorities will be;
- to diversify its product offering to meet new needs
- increase its team of agronomists to scale up training of farmers
- expand its physical presence by opening up in new locations
- create partnerships with farmer centric organisations so as to form synergies
