Agroshift wins ‘Stitch for RMG: Global Innovation Challenge’

Agroshift, an agritech startup, has been selected as one of the six winning teams for the "Stitch for RMG: Global Innovation Challenge" on 7 February, a programme organised and supported by H&M Foundation, Brac, and The Asia Foundation.

As a part of the winning team, Agroshift will receive incubation support, access to factories, and a grant for scaling their business operations across selected factories, said a press release on Wednesday (16 February). 

Stitch (Safeguarding through Innovation and Technology) for RMG aims to safeguard the livelihood of female garments workers.

The programme was launched on 25 October 2021, with the tagline "Tailoring the innovations of tomorrow."  A total of 1,258 teams from 39 countries submitted their ideas and 220 final submissions were received.

According to the media release, the global competition was launched in October of last year to promote improved livelihood opportunities for women working in Bangladesh's export-oriented readymade garment factories, and to promote gender equality on factory floors as well as to enhance factory performance.

Agroshift is building a tech-enabled platform to transform the agricultural supply chain of Bangladesh. Agroshift helps farmers sell their products to businesses and consumers by providing a tech-enabled supply chain merging the physical and digital worlds for a "phy-gital" business model which takes care of demand aggregation, sourcing, and delivery.

The company is currently focusing on two primary sales channels – the micro-retailers (neighbourhood mom-and-pop stores) and factories, with an addressable market size worth $18 billion and $2 billion respectively.    

For the factory channel, Agroshift aims to roll out a digital grocery ordering platform for RMG workers and employees providing primarily agro commodities like vegetables, fruits, rice, pulses, milk, and meat, along with other daily needs. Agroshift will eliminate the middlemen in the supply chain and provide workers direct access to high-quality, safe, and affordable food.

Through digital ordering, demand-driven supply, and a micro logistics network, the start-up fulfills orders by procuring directly from their farmer networks located across four districts of Bangladesh, taking care of the sorting, grading, packaging, and delivery in factories.

 "We are extremely honoured to have been selected as one of the top 6 winning teams in this highly competitive and selection innovation challenge. As an early-stage venture, we feel massively validated in our business model. With 4.4 million workers across 5000 factories, located within close geographic proximity, we are building a radical new marketplace connecting farmers to workers. Apart from the big market opportunity, our work is bringing significant social impact with RMG workers, particularly females with a direct positive impact on their livelihoods and financial wellbeing. Being recognised and endorsed by the apparel buyer in Bangladesh – H&M, we are excited in getting their support in rolling out and scaling our solution across factories," Agroshift Chief Operating Officer Diptha Saha said.

The founding team at Agroshift have a collective global experience in agriculture, technology, engineering and finance, with experiences ranging from scaling previous startups, running large technical team in fortune 500, running agricultural ventures and building farmer networks.

The global agritech domain expected to grow at a 12.1% CAGR in the next 5 years. "Bangladesh being a predominately agriculture economy, we can fully expect startups working in this space starting to make positive dents very soon," said Diptha Saha.