smallholder-farmers
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Shantanu Agarwal and the $50 Million Case for Rock Dust
He helped build a machine to take carbon out of the air. Then the Sustaera co-founder found another route through the problem: crushed volcanic rock, small farms, and a customer who never gets the bill.
Andrew Soeherman and the distance between a seed and a sale
Before co-founding Eratani, Andrew Soeherman sold tiles, helped expand Gojek in East Java and ran hospitality operations. His next business would follow rice farmers through the whole season, from finding capital to finding a buyer.
Manfred Borer and the missing links in your chocolate
A Swiss carpenter turned supply-chain entrepreneur, Manfred Borer has spent years making smallholder farms visible. At Koltiva, his approach pairs software with a decidedly physical requirement: someone has to go and look.
Gerald Tan and the business hiding in the paperwork
Gerald Tan grew up around rubber factories and spent years running the family business. At Agridence, he is turning the records behind a commodity trade into a business of their own.
Samuel Tirtasaputra and the distance between a click and a crop
After years in plantation procurement, Samuel Tirtasaputra co-founded Gokomodo to bring agricultural supplies closer to Indonesian farmers. His answer combines digital purchasing with something less virtual: stores, distribution networks and people on the ground.
Max Nelen and the price of waiting for rain
A Belgian entrepreneur found his way into Southeast Asian farming by asking about the diesel bill. At Agros, Max Nelen is building a business around solar irrigation, local trust and the moment a farmer can afford to pay.
Madhur Jain and the value of what farmers leave behind
Before he co-founded Varaha, Madhur Jain spent a decade building businesses around farmers. Now he is connecting their fields, crop residues and everyday decisions to an international market for carbon removal.
BigHaat sells the next move
A seed packet is only the beginning. BigHaat is building a business around what farmers need before they plant, while they grow, and after they harvest.
Panen.ID’s shortcut to the hotel kitchen
Panen Indonesia Sejahtera connects smallholder farmers with commercial kitchens. Its Bali-born business shows why fairer food trading takes crop plans, quality checks, delivery routes - and enough cash to wait for payment.
The 30-Centimeter Pipe That Made Rice Visible
Mitti Labs did not invent a better way to irrigate rice. It built the field operation, measurement system and market that could make an old idea travel across thousands of tiny farms.
Agros
Agros is a Singapore-based agtech company that helps smallholder fruit and vegetable farmers across Southeast Asia switch from diesel to solar-powered irrigation. It bundles hardware (its Agrosolar water pumps), flexible post-harvest financing (Agros Finance), and agronomy advisory into a one-stop platform, aiming to double farmer incomes while cutting fuel costs and carbon emissions. Founded in 2019 by Max Nelen, it operates in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Indonesia and has supported over 6,000 farmers.
Eratani
Eratani is an Indonesian agritech company that digitizes smallholder rice farming through one integrated platform. It connects previously isolated farmers to affordable financing, high-quality inputs, agronomic advice and buyers for their harvest - covering the full cycle from upstream to downstream. Founded in 2021, Eratani works with more than 34,000 rice farmers across Java and Sulawesi, manages over 13,000 hectares of paddy, and reports lifting yields by roughly 29% and farmer incomes by about 25%.
Gokomodo
Gokomodo is Indonesia's leading agribusiness supply chain company, blending a digital B2B procurement and e-commerce platform with a physical distribution network to connect large agribusiness corporates, cooperatives, farm stores, and smallholder farmers. Founded in 2019, it sources and delivers agricultural inputs - fertilizers, agrochemicals, equipment and more - at competitive prices, handling roughly 2% of national fertilizer distribution and serving an ecosystem of over 3,000 companies across Indonesia.
Koltiva
Koltiva is a Swiss-Indonesian agritech and climate-tech company that makes agricultural supply chains traceable, inclusive, and climate-smart. Through its KoltiTrace software platform and KoltiSkills field services, it connects smallholder producers to global brands with seed-to-table traceability, farm mapping, deforestation and EUDR compliance, carbon assessments, and digital finance. Founded in 2013 and led by co-founder and CEO Manfred Borer, Koltiva reports work with over 2 million registered producers across dozens of commodities and more than 90 countries.
Emily Stone
Emily Stone is the founder and CEO of Uncommon Cacao, the first specialty cacao trader to publish verifiable prices for every transaction along its supply chain. From a base that started in the jungles of Belize and Guatemala, she built a Transparent Trade model that sources from more than 10,000 smallholder farmers across 15+ countries and supplies hundreds of craft chocolate makers worldwide. An Ashoka Fellow and Georgetown-trained sociologist, she is trying to decommoditize cacao by making farmers the protagonists of the chain rather than its afterthought.
Kurt Tsuo
Kurt Tsuo is the Chief Business Officer of Varaha, a Gurugram-based carbon removal company building high-integrity credits with smallholder farmers across Asia and Africa. A Harvard-trained economist who spent seven years in agriculture before it was a climate headline, he has built business lines at the Gates Foundation, Farmer's Business Network, ProducePay, and Breakthrough Energy, and co-founded the carbon storage startup Graphyte. His through-line is unglamorous and stubborn: make the economics of fixing carbon work for the people who actually grow food.
Varaha
Varaha is an India-based climate-tech company that builds high-integrity carbon removal projects in the Global South. Working with roughly 170,000 smallholder farmers across about 1.7 million acres, it generates verified carbon credits through four pathways - regenerative agriculture, agroforestry, biochar, and enhanced rock weathering - and quantifies the results with a measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) platform powered by remote sensing, machine learning and field science. Its credits are bought by buyers like Google, Microsoft, Lufthansa and Swiss Re.