―Let me talk a bit about agriculture. Is there a general balance between productivity and cost?

Yes. After all, the reality of agriculture in Cambodia is that people do not spend money (invest) to increase productivity. It’s equivalent to not doing anything at all, so it’s not even agriculture in a real sense. For example, rice productivity in Cambodia is between 2.5t to 3t per hectare.

Vietnam has a rate of 6t and in Japan it is 8t per hectare. The average rate of 6t is not great comparing with global standards but the rates such as 2.5t is too low. The reason is that they don’t use proper seeds, they don’t use fertilizers and they don’t really take care of their fields and crops. If such facts were to be improved, it is not difficult to bring the productivity rate to 5t. Which is still lower than the average of our neighboring countries, but still it will double in productivity. And the cost to achieve such rates would not be double of the current costs. However, the idea of farmers in Cambodia is not to go ahead, if it is going to cost even one cent more than it is currently costing, this is simply because they do not have one more cent to spend.

―In India, is the service developed in the same way as Cambodia? Is there a unique difference?

The services being deployed are basically the same. India and Myanmar have a stronger impression of hierarchy in the villages. Cambodia’s hierarchy has been broken to pieces during the civil war. But, India and other countries continue to have generations of village chiefs for an example.

―In India, is mechanization in progress?

Mechanization has not progressed. For example, mechanization is more advanced in Cambodia than in India. India is still mostly cows cultivating the land and there are still very few tractors. Harvesters have been introduced for rice harvest in Cambodia and it is working quite well, but India still relies on manual work. I think that the reason is that there is a financing system progressing in Cambodia. 　However,,there is no competitive price for Cambodian crops and labor costs are not so cheap.

―You have various bases such as Hong Kong and India, but why are you mainly based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia? Can you also tell us about the outlook for the future?

I said that mechanization is more advanced in Cambodia, but India has advantages in insurance, and there is a system called Priority Lending, which is a system that a certain percentage of each bank’s loan portfolio should be lent to farmers, this has been introduced along with many policies. But the reality in India is that, such policies are not working properly. The reality is that it has advanced but has not reached all the way through to the end.

I think AGRIBUDDY’s work is to connect all the dots together and form a line, but Cambodia has no dots in the first place. There is nothing. The government does not have many programs for supporting rural farmers yet, and insurance products are custom made by us with Forte as local insurance company. I think that we will be able to take the essence of what we created in a country that has nothing, to other countries such as Myanmar or India.

As a business, Cambodia is still bigger than India. Various modifications have been made in Cambodia, and a system has been built, trial and error have been made, and the ones that I imagined in my head and the ones that we actually delivered are quite different. While adjusting such things, I will try to develop business in India without making the same mistakes. We are also planning to enter into Myanmar later this year.

I’m a foreigner and I can talk about many ideas, but I can’t really do anything on my own. I cannot talk to the farmers in the local language, nor can I lift their feelings. I just be able to go to meet them and smile. In other words, AGRIBUDDY cannot do anything without a local person who really believes and understands our concept of “We wish we could make a world like this”.

Our team in Cambodia is gradually coming together. This was not because I created the team, but they did. The same for India, and even if there are people who say, “I like it!” to my ideas, we can only make it happen if there are people who really form a team towards that goal. Under such circumstances, we finally found a person who will lead and build the team last year, India is finally at a stage where it has started to move. This will also be an issue when entering business in Myanmar. There are companies that will become partners, and there are people who are interested in investing in our business if we enter Myanmar. On the other hand, it is also required by farmers. However, It really would not work unless there is a passionate person who has the motivation to really change the rural life using the structure of AGRIBUDDY, a person who can actually act and lead. Nurturing the people and forming the teams will be the most important task.

（Interview and Photography　Ryoji Kawahara / Ryo Amasawa）

←Return to Vol. 2

―What was the reason for choosing Cambodia when trying to deploy your services?

I traveled through Southeast Asia around 2009, and I thought Cambodia was good at first. However, there was the possibility of making assumptions, so I decided to go around the rest of Southeast Asia. After going around SEA, I still thought that Cambodia was interesting, along with Myanmar. I thought Myanmar will grow if the military administration was to end, but I couldn’t imagine how long that would take. On the other hand, Cambodia has no military administration and no war. There was a great chance that the country would grow from here, and I decided to try something here. I always thought that I wanted to challenge myself in a place close to the post-war burnout field, and I thought that my business could also serve people.

The other was that I am an odd fellow and I wanted to do something that no one could challenge. There are many people in the real estate industry and travel industry who have success. Therefore, I decided to go to a place where no one goes to. Cambodia is an agricultural country, no one has starved to death here. They might be poor, but they have enough food. However, I felt that there was a lot of nonsense going on, even from my amateur eyes. I felt that if the farmers put more effort into their work, they would be more productive and be able to earn more. So, at the beginning, I decided to gather some money by myself and try to conduct the Japanese-style farming on a scale that cannot be done in Japan. I initially tried on 1000 hectares which is about the same size as Chuo-ku of Tokyo.

－How was the result of trying farming in Cambodia?

It was really difficult. 1000 hectares is really big when you stand on that area. If you think carefully, Tokyo Disneyland is about 50 hectares. When I am in the field, I cannot see at all where my field ends. Of course, I calculated how much production there would be from such area and all the costs involved, studying various statistics from the United Nations and the Cambodian government before starting the project. I asked many farmers too, and however I calculated it, farming would make a lot of money. I started the project from curiosity but… Well, the cost in reality was double, and the harvest amount was about half of all statistics and hearing we had gathered from the farmers. It ended with poor results.

I started thinking about why we got such results, eventually found out that even the data from the United Nations came from the same source. Which was a hearing-based research from the farmers. The data itself was unreliable, only based on interviews in rural areas, and the fact that people in rural areas were simply responding to what they heard from someone or what their mood was on the day. For example, the UN said that there were 60 million people in Myanmar, but the reality was that there were only 50 million, and they had made a mistake. If it was a miss count of 100 people, I could understand. But 10 million? You can imagine what it would be like for agricultural data. This means that the actual data in the rural area around the world is quite unpredictable.

And another was injustice and fraud. In Cambodia, there was a whole lot of frauds that I had heard of that happened to me. There were times when I was robbed by a group who came with a dump truck, and times that some parts from our tractor was taken hostage.

Back then, the salary was about 3 USD per person per day. I recruited people from nearby rural areas and employed between 700 to 1000 people. Obviously, the project was impossible to handle alone. So, I hired several managers. That resulted in salary per capita to increase. Moreover, the young people wanted to work in the city so only old people would gather.

From our point of view, we did not come to Cambodia to compete and defeat anyone, but we came here to nurture an affluent society with the Cambodian people. But, when the salary of local Cambodians increases, it became difficult to control the business. I began to think that it was wrong. In addition, I really should be mad if the work fell behind but with temperatures rising over 40 degrees and no shade in the fields, all the workers were doing their best. I cannot stand in the sun and work for an hour. So, with 3 USD a day becoming 6 USD a day, no one is really getting rich anyway, and one side would always be in pain. My thoughts of “things aren’t right” kept on growing deeper.

On the contrary, the fact that I had more money than the locals were the only reason that I could run a project on 1000 hectares of land. Apart from that, I didn’t introduce new innovation to Cambodia. And I thought to myself that this is not a business that I can be proud of as a Japanese. Only if we were aware of something, and that could be connected with a business model, that impact would be greater.

Since my background was in finance, I felt that if I could really know their reality and understand them, I could introduce financing in that area. I knew through experience of running a plantation that there was no money in the agricultural industry. So, I decided to shift the direction of our business from the operation of plantation to AGRIBUDDY. In that sense, AGRIBUDDY is a company that is based on the ideas that came from failure and my own pain.

←Return to Vol.1

Go to Vol.3 →

AGRIBUDDY (web site) provides FinTech and Ag Tech services for farmers, mainly in Cambodia and India. The company has built a mechanism to use technology to collect and visualize data from farmers in developing countries while linking it with financial institutions. Because of this, the farmers have an environment in which they can easily obtain financing. The ultimate goal is to create a financial and insurance infrastructure to protect the lives of farmers in developing countries. We interviewed Mr. Kengo Kitaura (CEO), about the situation in Cambodia where AGRIBUDDY’s main focus is.

■A brief introduction of Kengo Kitaura
AGRIBUDDY Ltd. Chief Executive Officer. Born in Osaka in 1971 and currently lives in Cambodia. Upon graduating from junior high school, he moved to the US and studied at Western High School in Anaheim, California. After returning to Japan, he worked in consumer financing then he moved to Cambodia in 2010. AGRIBUDDY was established in January 2015.
※Bold letters：Interviewer　Photo from：AGRIBUDDY

－Almost ten years have passed since you came to Cambodia, how has the agricultural situation changed?

First of all, the number of cattle farmers have decreased. The number of tractors has increased instead.. Cambodia is becoming like a “financial paradise”, tractors and other machineries are also being sold through financing.

I think the situation stated above in Cambodia has its positives and negatives, but it is very important for the farmers to have an environment in which they can obtain reliable financing. There are various services in the world categorized in Ag Tech, but even if there is good technology and great fertilizer or other Agri-products, none of them can be used without the money to buy it, and technology cannot be introduced without the appropriate knowledge. Personally, I think the biggest problem is not the lack of goods and services, but the lack of money and ability (knowledge) to introduce them.

Whether it’s a tractor or a new machine, if farmers have the money to invest there, they can take as many as they want. That’s where the ideology of AGRIBUDDY comes from. The geniuses around the world are creating great tools and technology. But I wonder, “How do they sell it?”, I think we have to change the fact that “the buyers are too poor to buy such things”.

－It seems like AGRIBUDDY is a combination of Ag tech and Fintech. What challenges do you face while developing services for farmers in developing countries? It feels like that is also the motivation for AGRIBUDDY to expand its business.

Without finance, you cannot buy real estate, homes or cars. Furthermore, even mobile phones. In Japan, everyone uses an iPhone, but since they pay the mobile phone cost on top of their call charges, it is also a type of loan. Without finance, things really don’t progress.

To take out a loan, naturally the financial institutions have to know if the loan will be repaid. For example, if you live in Japan and work for Mitsubishi Corporation, it is easy to lend money. If you are 30 years old and single, it is quite easy to predict the salary. Withholding slips and pay slips will show a more detailed financial situation, and Mitsubishi corporation will never issue a false pay slip. Also, by asking where they live gives you an idea of the rent they pay, if they had bought the house it is easy to calculate how much they pay on mortgage. So, the lender can assess the borrower’s ability to repay a loan without much effort.

However, If you are in Southeast Asia, payroll statements may be fake, and no tax proof will be issued in many cases. If they are working at a company, you can imagine that “someone’s salary working in Phnom Penh would be about $300 per month.” But if you a farmer, there is no way of getting such information. If you asked the farmers directly, they would say “I made $5000 last year” or “I made $10,000 last year”, but that can be sales and not profit, we can’t assess if those figures are for real either. Under such circumstances, the lender has no way to assess their ability to repay the loan.

I always emphasize, that the “credibility” that financial institutions think and that of what the farmers think are fundamentally different. The credibility that farmers and people in general think is something like, “I have never lied,” or “I have not betrayed anyone,” or “I have been living here all these years” and “I know everyone around here.”. On the other hand, the credibility that a financial institution has in mind is all about “What ability do you have to repay?” There is a big gap here. We thought that if we could fill the gaps in between the two, farmers would be able to borrow money. And if farmers are able to borrow money, they will be able to buy necessary Agri-input or machinery that they could have never afforded without financing, and the productivity of agriculture will increase.

There are many products to sell, many things the farmers want to buy, and there are many institutions to lend money. But the reality is that such institutions cannot lend money to the farmers. So, the farmers cannot buy the essentials they need to perform decent agriculture, the manufacturer can’t sell to farmers because they have no money either, we started our business so we could eliminate such situations in between.

Go to Vol.2

Finally, we have completed the series A round fund-raising which was a long way to come, so now we are ready for the next stage, we gathered major shareholders and board members who are able to travel to Cambodia, our management team from India, all staff and BUDDY (AGRIBUDDY’s Rural Agents) members and selected farmers from Cambodia to conduct a team building conference.

AGRIBUDDY has shareholders not only in Japan, but in Cambodia, Singapore and Denmark. The board members are scattered throughout Japan, Cambodia, India and Vietnam. Because we are developing business in India and Cambodia, each of the senior management team has little opportunity to interact with each other. Furthermore, most Cambodian team members are not acquainted with our board members and do not understand the concept of shareholders in the first place. The main aim for this program was to provide opportunities for each of them to interact in real life and to provide a platform to understand what kind of people are involved in AGRIBUDDY’s business and their respective positions.

In my opening session, I spent about half of the time to explain how the shareholders support AGRIBUDDY, introducing shareholders who joined us and asked Mr. Okubo and Mr. Krishna for a short speech and helped the members grasp an image of the management team.

Of course, I cannot speak Khmer at a level that is understandable, so I asked Mr. Pak who is the managing director to Cambodia for an interpretation.

Unfortunately, two of the five board members were unable to participate but we were able to welcome two board members from Tokyo.

One was Mr. Okubo, who I mentioned in my last article.

It was the first visit to Cambodia for Mr. Krishna. He came directly to the venue from the airport.

Here is a speech by Mr. Boran, CEO of AMK which is a local financial institution and one of AGRIBUDDY’s strongest partners.

AMK originally started as a Christian NGO micro finance institution after the civil war in Cambodia, initially they employed only Christians, but they faced shortage of human resource, so they decided to employ people from other religions . Mr. Boran was the first “non-Christian employee” at AMK, his parents were poor and could not raise their children, so he was sent to a local temple. He studied English there, and was hired by AMK for his language skills. After joining the company, he studied accounting and after a lot of hard work he is now the CEO of a financial institution that has over 600,000 customers.

After the introduction, Mr. Pakk made a presentation about AGRIBUDDY’s progress, current situation and the future goals. He also made an introduction of our field staff, BUDDY and farmers who gathered from various provinces of Cambodia.

A short speech by the farmer’s representative and the local staff of AGRIBUDDY followed.

AGRIBUDDY ‘s field staff representative, Mr. Chan was a former section head of the Polpot army.

Polpot denied education, so it is obvious that he could only go to school for a few years, but despite his age (mid-fifties) and the fact that he is an average farmer living in a rural area, he is very eager to accept new opportunities. He is diligent and sincere and also a mood maker who is loved by everyone. Even though he didn’t know the alphabet when we first met, he now collects farmers’ data using his smartphone, he once sent me a message in Japanese using Google Translate and I was deeply touched by that. This is why I can’t stop working on this project, because I can see the moment when someone’s life changes, and this really motivates me.

Next, we had a Q&A session with AGRIBUDDY’s partners and farmers.

There isn’t much opportunity for farmers in remote areas to talk directly with the CEO of a microfinance institution, grain buyers, or agricultural material manufacturers because they live in a narrow world both physically and socially. Despite the fact that each business operator is related to agriculture, there is no way of contact with people other than in their own area or circle. So, this is the first time that they had the opportunity to connected with each other directly.

Actually, all the discussions were conducted in Khmer except for the speech made by myself and the board members, so I couldn’t understand what was going on 80% of the time. Despite that this company was founded by myself and I am currently managing the business as chief executive officer and this conference was my idea….

Well, I often go to rural areas and often do not know what the farmers are saying, so I am familiar with this situation, but as I was watching the conference progress objectively, I was wondering “How on earth did we get where we are today, how did the company grow like this?”. Because my (the founder) English is quite broken, probably only half of the attendants at the conference understands what I am saying, yet still everybody at the conference can communicate and discuss how AGRIBUDDY will improve farmers and the circumstances surrounding them.

The confidence in my skill set was my ability in communication in Japanese. I think that I am a person who likes to communicate, is also good at explaining and talking to people about things. I also like to read books and I think that my writing skills aren’t so bad wither. But that is all in Japanese. Certainly, I can communicate in English at a decent level but compared with a lot of other English natives, my ability is very limited, and my reading and writing skills are terrible. Of course, it gets worse in Khmer, my five-year-old son speaks much better Khmer than I do… Despite doing business here where I cannot use my skills, the business has done well so far. It makes me think that if I was able to communicate in Khmer in the same way as my Japanese, would the business have grown further?

The answer I am sure would be “No”.

That is because I can express only about the most important thing that I want to get the message through, and I guess I can do that without any bias because of my limited language skills. When there are more words, the most important thing you want to express can blur, the actions behind the words and expressions or feelings become invisible.

I was able to see through such facts through the conference and I was touched to see all these people believe in our business and future prospects and I was really happy to be able to connect people in various positions. From now on I would like to continue to hold such a conference at least once a year, so that I can provide a whole new encounter and experience for the farmers and BUDDY who are living a limited life with little change and don’t have much opportunity to leave their villages.

The beginning of the story was a message that Mr. Nagashima (who is in charge of AGRIBUDDY ‘s finance and management) sent me via Slack. By the way, for those who are interested in venture investment I encourage you to take a peek at his blog because he reveals so much detail of funding to the companies he works with.
https://note.mu/tsnagashima

“It seems like Keisuke Honda is in Cambodia, it might be interesting if he could invest in AGRIBUDDY considering his ideas and tweets we all see.”, he sent me this message, along with the URL of Keisuke Honda’s tweet.

I wondered where he was and googled, and I found the fresh announcement of him taking chair as GM of Cambodian national football team. I thought that’s big news but had no clue or means to connect with him, wondering if any of my friends on Facebook in Cambodia had connections with him, searching on Facebook I still had no connections what so ever. I thought to myself that Mr. Nagashima often gives me these unreasonable suggestions and left for my business trip to Japan. I had an appointment with Mr. Ieiri from Campfire right after I landed in Tokyo. Below is the story about how Mr. Ieiri ended up investing in AGRIBUDDY.

http://kengokitaura.com/2017/11/01/supporter/

Mr. Ieiri had set up a VC called NOW（https://now.vc/）, and I also met his business partner, Mr. Kajitani. We chatted about all sorts of things (mainly my stories of failure) and had a great time.

“Do you happen to know Keisuke Honda? He has taken office as GM of the Cambodian football team and what he talks about might be great emotional support for our clients (small-scale farmers), BUDDY (who are rural entrepreneurs and leaders of the group of farmers) and our employees. I really think it will be great if he can get involved.” I asked Mr. Ieiri, quite surprisingly he knew Keisuke Honda personally and told me that he would happily connect us with him. Few hours later, Keisuke Honda contacted us, and we scheduled a presentation via video call three days later.
He agreed to invest in AGRIBUDDY through this video call and this was another story of the series A fund raising rounds. I thought again that it is amazing that how quickly these people make decisions. After all it is fun to work with such amazing people and I also want to move forward without being left behind from them.

By the way, as I wrote in my blog yesterday, I am very much compatible with Ms. Shigeta, but I also have very good compatibility with Mr. Nagashima (and I assume this selfishly). He has given me a killer pass (or a super save) at least three times in the past few months since he joined our team in June 2018, Mr. Honda’s participation would not have happened without Mr. Nagashima’s suggestion. And the great support from Mr. Ieiri was also a key factor in this too. Looking back, I think that I always have people helping and supporting me, and I am always wondering how I can contribute back to them. Of course, I must bring success to our business, but I hope that I can give something in return to them in some other form.

As such thoughts pass my mind, I found out that Mr. Ieiri started another business. “escort” is a society that supports growth of business and provide mental support for the entrepreneur team. Generally speaking, when running a business, you will encounter quite a lot of hardships, especially during startup, rapid growth is expected and if you have investors you have to deliver results. For young people in their twenties or thirties with limited experience, sometimes they are forced into a corner and face mentally hard situations. And unfortunately, some may fail during their journey. If there was a system to support and provide care for such people, they may be able to challenge with confidence. I also registered to the service because I may be able to provide advice and support to someone from my experience as an entrepreneur.

https://es-cort.co/

I am quite impressed of all the services that he comes up with and then realizes them one by one.

AGRIBUDDY was founded by myself who although is a Japanese, our business has nothing to do with Japan, company is based in Hong Kong and our business model is not such a model that will be listed on a Japanese stock exchange. Under such circumstances, I figured it will be difficult to source the necessary funds from Japan, nor it will be an advantage to our business and its future plans by doing so, I always thought that it will be beneficial to work together with global investment funds out of Japan. But, since my ability of communicating in English is very limited comparing with my mother tongue, I thought that there was going to be “Giant Walls” that we had to get over at some point in our journey when I first started AGRIBUDDY, and back then I knew that I had no means or wits of getting over that wall.

Although I am a business man, I do not have a character of a serial entrepreneur, I have never experienced fund raising or third-party allocation of funds in my life of over forty years, and I had no idea of what people were talking about when I heard phrases such as series A fund raising or seed stage investment. For us, it was a bilingual (JP/ENG) venture capitalist who initially participated in the seed stage investment (ultra-risk funds) of AGRIBUDDY, Mr. Noriaki Okubo has a history of actively engaging in overseas M&A of trendy companies, and it was exciting to have him on the board member at the initial stage.

In addition, Mr. Yorihiko Kato who had participated in our business from the Cambodian agricultural plantation company before we spun off AGRIBUDDY as an independent project, he was also the one who made the suggestion of going independent and has always been the most supportive element of our team, we did have the vision of “Procuring funds from international investors out of Japan” back then but it wasn’t even at the seed stage of the business and we were a small agriculture startup in Cambodia which is a small country in SEA with not much positive images for conducting business. Having Mr. Kato on our team was positive for AGRIBUDDY because we could proudly introduce our project to investors with his backup. He was the reason why investors took the time to hear us out, and back then we had no other way, he has been supporting our activities side by side on procuring the funds and this is why we were able to complete the process. Here are some articles about this:

http://ken5.jp/kengo/archives/2500
http://katou.jp/?eid=575

The next round will no longer be an excuse. We must connect to international investment institutions and prove that we have a solid future. After the first procurement of funds in February 2017, we replaced the board member from Mr. Kato to Ms. Shigeta, who lives in India, and we also actively employed senior management personnel. Among them was Mr. Rajesh, an Indian who I highly appreciate. We sent him to the pitch event in April 2018 (NEST 2018) to test his abilities, I had been appearing in the pitch events in Japan (in Japanese) and one several events in a row, but in this occasion, I decided to send Mr. Rajesh and prepared the presentation in English. The result was he pushed the winners of every local pitch events in the country and won at a tie along with Pocket Marche, which brought great hope for us towards our future developments.

http://ken5.jp/kengo/archives/2515
http://katou.jp/?eid=585

In July, the MD of our Cambodian firm Mr. Pak joined us, it is no exaggeration to say that he is the second founder, and at this timing the business starts to form into shape, but I think I will write about that in a different occasion. As we had won several pitch events in Japan and receiving contacts from various investment institutions in Japan, sometimes we also hold presentations towards foreign investment institutions, so it is inevitable to prepare all presentation materials in both Japanese and English, it is complicated because the order we build the conversation and the composition of the story is totally different in the two languages.
Mr. Rajesh wasn’t confident in the creation of such presentation materials, so I had to do all the creation of the materials, then we brushed up the presentation in English, that is how we started anyway. Last November, Ms. Shigeta contacted us about an event “Farm to Fork” held in Bangalore, this was hosted by Mistletoe and asked if we wanted to join. Mr. Rajesh was already in Bangalore to attend the event, but Ms. Shigeta contacted me just before the event and told me that I had to be the one on stage, she said that there were several influential investors including Mr. Taizo Son, and it would be the perfect occasion to present AGRIBUDDY directly to them. So, that’s how I ended up talking amongst many Indian agricultural venture startups as a panelist, the change was finalized on the day of the event.

As a result, we were able to impress Mr. Taizo, he commented “you have a wonderful approach, please let us support you” and he decided to join the series A fund procurement, Ms. Shigeta’s precise judgement in all of this was proven in its best form. Actually, I was invited to the pitch events in Japan after appearing at NIKKEI Fintech, but this event was also a suggestion by Ms. Shigeta. I am always thinking that my compatibility with Ms. Shigeta is really good. (I don’t know how she feels about this but anyway…)

I could not thank her enough of the efforts she made physically and mentally till the end of the series A round, if I would say that Mr. Kato was the key person in the last rounds, then Ms. Shigeta is definitely the key person of this round. In that sense, I think the timing of changing the board member to her from Mr. Kato was impeccable.

Some may raise questions saying that since Mr. Taizo from Mistletoe made investment, we are not global at all. What is great about Mistletoe is that they have an international team based in Singapore, all staff of different nationalities communicate in English and is a “complete global investment institution”. Of course, Mr. Taizo and Mr. Taira, the managing director will be there to support, but basically all communication with the team committed with AGRIBUDDY is going to be conducted in English. And this is already showing positive impact, which is negotiations with other investment agencies. One of the members was proficient in both corporate finance and English and he played the role of a lead investor and took the opportunity to talk to other candidates for investment.

What I think is one of the big achievements of this round is that the local Cambodian VC and insurance company made a positive evaluation of AGRIBUDDY and made an investment. Receiving investment from companies who understands this country, actually doing business here and delivering results, gaining their trust and cooperation, this fact is very encouraging for AGRIBUDDY and the high expectation value is also encouraging for us too. Nonetheless, even though they had assessed AGRIBUDDY to some extent before the investment was finalized, and even with the support from Mistletoe’s team, I was totally helpless with the final negotiations and reading through all the final rules and fine print of the contract. Perhaps it does not matter whether it is written in Japanese, because the detailed rules are all based on corporate finance and I have no clue on the subject. Mr. Okubo was the one who supported me through this. Although AGRIBUDDY are already in a business partnership with Forte, it was Mr. Okubo who connected us to the top management of Forte for their strategic business alliance investment.

As a result, four global investment companies; Mistletoe of Singapore, Smart Axiata Digital Innovation Fund, a company run by one of the leading mobile phone companies in Cambodia, FORTE Investment Holdings which is the leading insurance company of Cambodia and INDEX: Design to Improve Life from Denmark, has agreed to invest in our company. I think I can say that we have climbed over one of the “Giant Walls” I visualized at the beginning. Although I knew that I had no ability to do so, with the support and cooperation of so many around us, we made it. And I am sure there will be many more obstacles we have to overcome during our long journey. But I believe with the team we have, and as long as we can all challenge this mission, we will be able to overcome anything.

A post on my Facebook from several days ago: “We have super high-spec people joining AGRIBUDDY even if it means them resigning from a large enterprise with high payrolls, throwing all that away and joining us just because they want to change the world utilizing their skills. This isn’t only about AGRIBUDDY, but it is now a global trend. Until now, remuneration has been only about “money”, but I feel that it is now being transformed into a combination of “money to live a firm life” and invisible values such as “social significance and a sense of satisfaction”.

I put a lot of thought into this and about the new values that AGRIBUDDY can create in rural areas of developing countries, and about the current situation of people who live in rural villages.

The current state in developing countries such as Cambodia and India, or in Japan until about twenty years ago, and probably still the mainstream in the world, where “Money” is still the main axis of “Evaluating people”, this is still the common recognition from people around the world because it is a numerical value clear to any of us. If you earn 500,000 yen then you are better off than a person earning 200,000 yen, if your annual income exceeds ten million yen then you are even better off. Someone with assets of one hundred billion yen is recognized in this world higher than a person with one hundred million yen of assets. It is all based on how big the numbers are. We believe that such things as the world’s billionaire ranking on Forbes or the similar rankings we had in Japan before is the proof of judging people based on the “numerical value of money”.

People in such rankings, or people who are known to hold “huge numerical value” spend their money and wealth on “items that increase their value”, a man might spend his money on expensive watches or luxurious cars, and a woman may buy a branded handbag or jewelry. People with such purchase power are assumed to be able to “afford to buy such items” or have a “special status or connection to be able to get such items”, and their main aim is to show off such matters to a third party. The usability such as knowing the exact time (if we are talking about a watch) or being able to transport goods efficiently (if we are talking about bags) isn’t the main objective but an added value. So, they purchase items for self-branding (or to fulfill his or her desire for recognition) and they use “well known international brands” to do so.

Of course, there are many people in the world who can be evaluated easily without numerical values other than that of money. For example, baseball player Ichiro and Shogi player Yoshiharu Habu, hold a lifetime status that they reached during their career such as batting average rate or winning all seven major titles. Running 100m in nine seconds or winning the Wimbledon match is a similar title too. These people are evaluated with completely different figures from the numeric value of money, so it is unlikely that they will be evaluated as to how much revenue or how much assets they own.

And recently, with the evolution of technology, there are so many opportunities to receive evaluation from third parties in the world we live in. Viewers on YouTube or followers on Twitter are good examples. By visualizing what used to be invisible, such numbers are now considered “value of the person” assessed from a third party. And again, this figure does not necessarily need to be in the form of a ranking such as “No. xx out of seven billion people around the world”, just by visualizing that there are “x” people who are evaluating said person, that will satisfy their desire of recognition.

Recently, the younger generation have stopped consuming. They have also stopped trying to earn more money. I often hear that it is because they are satisfied being surrounded by “items” since the time they were born, but I think that the biggest reason is that they have more options and opportunities to be evaluated other than in the form of “money”. When we were young, there were only a few options for us to be evaluated by from third parties (especially when the relationship isn’t that deep). People in the general community who do not have special skills like Ichiro and Yoshiharu Habu had no other choice but go for the numeric value that money offered to satisfy their desire of recognition. However, nowadays, as the number of options for evaluations increases, it can be seen as old fashioned to follow the “premodern numerical value” and there is even a tendency to lower one’s evaluation by following such values, so younger people (and those who understand the current evaluation axis trends) consciously and unconsciously avoid making such an appeal.

So, in a society like Japan, “earning money” or having “a lot of money or assets” doesn’t work really well anymore and it has become difficult to obtain public evaluation or to satisfy their desire of recognition. It does not mean that the desire to satisfy their recognition has disappeared nor we have evolved into wonderful human beings that do not hold such selfish cravings.

But, in Cambodia and India where I live, the value of money is still an evaluation axis that determines the value of the people. China is also still the same. How much you earn or the larger the size of the numeric values is the only thing that matters and leads to increasing your value, so even if you do bad things, you still get a good rating from the public if you earn some money from it. That is why politicians and civil servants have no problem with waring expensive watches or driving a Rolls Royce. As for the desire to maximize the evaluation towards yourself remains the same whether you are Japanese, Cambodian or Indian. The only difference is the axis of value for evaluation, and the fact is that the options for evaluation is still minimal in such countries.

So, what about the small-scaled farmers that AGRIBUDDY targets who are living in remote areas? What kind of numeric values are they evaluated on?

Those farmers live on less than $2 a day (under the poverty line), or are people who fall under the world income level of x%… They are “People who are nearly worthless” or “people who are not worth the while to count” because we base our value on the numeric value of money. Moreover, they live in a society where “the size of the numerical value of money enhances the evaluation of the person”. Under these conditions, can people live with confidence in themselves? Do we have the right to blame them because they were tormented by overwhelming helplessness?

Can you tell them to do their best when “However hard you try, you will not reach the top half of the ranking, nor reach one hundredth of the value people think are worthwhile.”?

Before I launched AGRIBUDDY, I used to work on a plantation project and employed many local Cambodian workers, and this has always been swirling in the corner of my head. What can we do to increase the income of small-scaled farmers, what can we do to give them more choices that can be solved by money, these are the things we have been working on ever since we launched AGRIBUDDY, as long as they live in a society where the numeric value of money is the main evaluation axis, I have been bashed with the reality that is near impossible to help such farmers earn enough income to be “ranked worthwhile”. And yes, we do not include “to dramatically raise the evaluation from public and self-dignity that accompanies the raise of evaluation” in the task of “things we can solve with money”.

Of course, you all know that such small-scaled farmers are equally valuable. We know many great small-scaled farmers. We know people who do not have money but are respected and trusted by people surrounding them. So, how is it possible to evaluate such people correctly? Can’t we create new figures that become standards that anyone can understand? For example, in Dragon Ball, the fighting power was digitized and visualized through the scouter, can’t we digitize personal values such as “excellence as a person” or “kindness” or “spirit of service” and make it visible from everyone around us? What kind of world will it be if we can visualize such values?

AGRIBUDDY will continue to provide services that enables farmers to earn more money in order to improve their standard of living. And it is equally as important to create a totally different value that is not based on the numeric value of money, there could be people who are “earning money but are not really rated high in AGRIBUDDY’s economy” or there could be people who “do not make much money but are highly rated on AGRIBUDDY’S economy”. I want to create such a system that “people receive respect from others on an axis that is not money”. Hopefully the people who receive great reputation within the economy of AGRIBUDDY will start acting in order to receive “great reputation”, and in the end that will also result in earning more money. We will aim to build such a system and service in the future.

AGRIBUDDY is still a small and powerless startup, but we want to create a world where as many people can live with dignity. So, we need cooperation, support and advice from as many people as possible now and in the future. If you think you have something to offer, please do not hesitate to contact us from the below link, we are waiting for your support!

We live in a world that is filled with opportunities where “Dreams will come true as long as you stop complaining and try hard” or “anything is possible if you really try your best”. We are able to attend schools and receive minimum education, an ambulance will come to take us to hospital if we get injured or become sick. Although there may be certain gaps, there isn’t a big difference between the rich and the ordinary people ‘s daily calorie intake, everyone is able to take a train or airplane or a car to travel freely.

But a society that we believe as obvious, receiving proper education or eating nutritious food, going to hospitals to receive medical care when you get injured or sick, after all that we have options for the future. People who are living in a healthy society have the possibility to be rewarded if they do their best, there are multiple opportunities to try hard, even in this era where technology has developed to this extent, the majority of the world still has not caught up with technology .

I myself have had a blessed life with many options thanks to being born in a country called Japan at a good age irrespective of my own intention and efforts. Because I am living in such a blessed society, I want to create such a mechanism of society that we consider natural, for those who live in remote areas of developing countries. The standard of living we consider normal is thanks to our ancestors who built a society who thought not only about themselves and their own family but also about the community as a whole, I would like to spread this to the people of countries other than Japan. Through AGRIBUDDY, I want to challenge to create a healthier society.

In order to create a healthy society, we need money to use as a grease to exchange various necessary services. As a first step, we must build a framework that enables us to know more about their reality, then build a platform that can connect directly with them. In addition, AGRIBUDDY’s primary goal is to provide income to support the minimum living infrastructure and provide finances such as “Safe loans and insurance for emergencies”.

While thinking about such things in the past several years, talking about our business plans with various people and various places, I have met with more and more people who also sympathized with such ideas outside of Japan, in India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, Philippines and Mozambique and this has started to form into shape gradually.
Through such events taking place, Mr. Kazuma Ieiri has written about AGRIBUDDY in one of his latest books, he is an entrepreneur known for starting the biggest crowd funding service in Japan. I found out this news through a friend and bought the book immediately and felt nothing but empathy while reading through the book. I contacted Mr. Shinji Tsunoda of Akasaka International Law, Patent and Accounting and asked him to introduce me to Mr. Ieiri.

Mr. Ieiri happily agreed to join AGRIBUDDY as a shareholder and a supporter. I am really looking forward to getting an artistic and friendly outlook of Mr. Ieiri infused to AGRIBUDDY.

Mr. Tesshu Matsumura has also made an investment to AGRIBUDDY. He was known as Mr. Yen, former director of international finance bureau of the Ministry of Finance, he has been actively supporting us by introducing us to influencers such as Mr. Eiji Sakakibara who is in charge of “Institute of Indian Economic Studies”.

Mr. Shunji Kobayashi who is the former CTO of video game provider “Aiming”, who lead the company to its listing has joined us as a shareholder. He is now retired from Aiming, started “OWNERS”, a platform to connect consumers with farmers in Japan. I hope that a strong synergy is generated while sharing the gap between Japan’s agricultural industry where the standard of living that AGRIBUDDY is aiming for exists and the agricultural industry in developing countries who aims to bring the similar standards to be realized in their own countries.

“Collecting data from poor farmers in Cambodia, are you an NPO?”, “I don’t really get it, can you make money through this?” are the kind of comments AGRIBUDDY received when starting this project, we have finally made the baby milestone and are ready to be on our feet thanks to all the people who have supported us. We will further accelerate from here, please keep an eye out for AGRIBUDDY and keep on sending us the support. Thank you.

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As a reward for receiving the grand prize at “Mirai 2017” in February, I was able to attend “NEST2017” to make a presentation about AGRIBUDDY.
http://nest.jane.or.jp/pitchevent/

AGRIBUDDY received many valuations from judges for both “Nikkei Fintech” last year and “Mirai2017”, but this time a variety of other unique startups, a total 11 companies were selected to participate in this event, all receiving recommendation from organizers of pitch events around Japan had their presentation ready. It was very exciting to be able to listen to the presentation of such selected people because they were the ones who represent the startup scene in Japan.

From my experience of the three occasions of presentation I gave in front of an audience, I knew that I received a good valuation from the people in Japan. But AGRIBUDDY’s business does not operate in Japan and for us to move toward the next step, we had to be ready to give presentations at events or to foreign investors outside of Japan. In order to do so, “A presentation that grasps the hearts of non-Japanese audiences in English” was inevitable.

From that point of view, since more than half of the judges at “NEST2017” were non-Japanese, I thought that it is a perfect opportunity towards the next step, I decided to send Mr. Rajesh to give a presentation instead of myself, he is an ally and a native English speaker.

I met Mr. Rajesh back in 2015, when I encountered a chance to speak with an investor in San Francisco. I needed someone who was able to give a presentation in English and he was introduced to me by an agent looking for candidates. In many occasions, I would give presentations about my business in English but was feeling frustrated because I was not able to communicate my thoughts completely. I remember clearly when Mr. Rajesh gave a flowing presentation about our business and my thoughts on it the following day after I had explained the business to him in detail.
Since I decided to send Mr. Rajesh for the presentation, I made him responsible for building the story concept and the creation of the presentation slides. If he was able to deliver results from this event, it will mean that we (or him) were born under a strong star. A Japanese giving a presentation at an international meeting is a difficult decision, but Indians are known to talk a lot, we only have five minutes for this presentation. Under these limited conditions, he made a presentation slide and we sent it to Mr. Higashi of JRI who was going to be on stage with us as an introducer, he advised us to add detailed business models into the presentation. So, I told Mr. Rajesh about the given advice and we ended up making major changes to the presentation. It was great to receive advice from a third party instead of myself.

Rehearsals the day before the event.
We give our presentations in front of the advisors at the actual pitch, Mr. Rajesh, who cares about the limited time he has speaks to fast and stutters, fast forwards the slide and the content of his words and the sides didn’t match, leaving anxiety towards the event. He was given advise to delete letters from the slide to make it simple looking with bigger letters, so it seems that he had made further improvements on the presentation slides.

The day of the event.

Mr. Kurahashi, who is now a board member of AGRIBUDDY and Mr. Shiba who joined us as an accountant visited us at the event at Hotel New Otani. When I am the one on stage, I do not care much and feel relaxed. But this time I had a unique sense as other speakers gave their presentations. I wonder how my “Expectation for the first step to the next development” will pan out.

It was a wonderful presentation. Very easy-to-hear English with rhythm and passion, passed on the significance of the project. Mr. Rajesh worked as I expected, so we just wait for the judges’ evaluation.

Now the results.
We were told that there were two winners, the first company announced was “Pocket-Marche”, a company that I didn’t think that was the most powerful competitor. If so, is the other winner the powerful competitor that I had thought about or is it us? another company either outright or its competitor? I felt sweat in my hands as we waited for the announcement of the other winner.

Mr. Rajesh who is a foreigner with zero Japanese language skills giving a presentation in English at an event organized by a Japanese company and with an audience where more than half of the judges are non-Japanese, explaining about a business model which was founded by me (he is not the founder) , we still received great evaluation. This is definitely a big first step towards the next step for us.

The following day was Mr. Kato’s birthday, who is a partner who has supported AGRIBUDDY’s business ever since the stage of initial concept creation. He has also written an article about this event.
http://katou.jp/?eid=585

Thank you for giving us this occasion, Mr. Higashi of JRI, the continuous support we received from Mr. Kagimasa, Mr. Kurahashi who made efforts to give Mr. Rajesh a great time in Japan (this was his first trip to Japan), to all those who joined us for dinner, thank you again. I understand that the evaluation we have received is expectation for our future, so I will do my best to make it happen. I look forward to your continued support.

I came back to Cambodia after finishing my two-week business trip around five cities in India, traveling to Osaka then Tokyo via Bangkok. Took me two hours to get passed immigration after arriving in cool Delhi from Cambodia where it is very hot all year round, I had to skip an appointment which Ms. Shigeta had especially made for me, a very Indian style start of a trip I must say. All five cities I went round by airplane had different temperature which shows the magnitude of India, while starting the leg of the flight at Kolkata Airport at 2 AM (5:30 AM Japan time) to Bangkok, pushing my tired body towards the limit, it was 6℃ when I arrived in Osaka at 4PM.
Moreover, if I had a checked baggage, it will be in the way through my long trip and a waste of time at the airport. All I had was a small carryon bag with very limited clothing, when I arrived in Japan I was wearing a fleece top and an ultra-light down jacket from Uniqlo. I am confident that I was the most lightly dressed guy in Kansai until I purchased a coat the following day.

Anyway, we published a press release related to the fund raise we just completed on January 31st, just before I left for my business trip.
＊“AGRIBUDDY”, a startup that supports fund management of farmers using mobile apps in developing countries raises 730K USD from iSGS Investment Works Inc, Yorihiko Paul Kato and others.
http://thebridge.jp/2017/02/agribuddy-730k-funding

＊ Agribuddy nets $730K in funding
http://m.phnompenhpost.com/business/agribuddy-nets-730k-funding

＊ I found an article published in Khmer (Well I think it is about the funding because I can read iSGS Investment Works Inc…)
Agribuddy ទទួលមូលនិធិ$៧៣ម៉ឺន

I thought of writing an article about it while on my business trip, but Mr. Kato had written an article before me while making many excuses and waited till I got back to Cambodia.
http://katou.jp/?eid=575

In the article there is a line, “The company is a startup that began in Cambodia, and this increase of capital is a result of Mr. Kitaura and my efforts for the past year. To be honest, it was quite difficult. After all, startups that have little relation to Japan in the frontier of Southeast Asia are…”, as he has written there were so many issues and hardships during this voyage. I am deeply grateful for those who have agreed to the capital increase this round, to Mr. Kato who has agreed to increase his share of funding and to all the existing shareholders. While being supported by so many people, this was an opportunity for me to realize that I am running toward a big goal.
The main purpose of this business trip in Japan was to announce what AGRIBUDDY is trying to accomplish through our business. “Mirai 2017” is one of Japan’s largest pitch contest backed by Japan Research Institute and Mitsui Sumitomo Bank.
https://mirai.ventures/

We successfully passed through the secondary preliminaries held at Mitsui Sumitomo Bank’s head office in Tokyo last December, this time the final presentation was held in my home town Osaka at Rihga Royal Hotel.

Mr. Tachibana the president of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and Mr. Fuchizaki the president of Japan Research Institute both attended the event and I was very happy to be awarded both the SMFG award and the Grand Prize with such amazing people being present.

I look like a wanted criminal even on such a special occasion don’t I, I will practice more on my smile. I am so sorry, Mr. Tachibana…

When the SMFG award was announced, I thought the Grand Prize was out of the question. When the moderator asked me for the second comments, I froze for a second not knowing what I would like to say. Well, I should have bought a proper jacket for such a special occasion too.

We were able to participate in “Mirai 2017” because of the award win at NIKKEI Fintech last year, which was thanks to Ms. Shigeta reaching out to us. AGRIBUDDY really has a team of great supporters around us.
＊ AGRIBUDDY received an award
http://ken5.jp/kengo/archives/2415

Ms. Shigeta has agreed to support AGRIBUDDY as a director, we will advance our business to India along with Cambodia. Thank you all for your continuous support.