Farming is a feature of every tax bracket in Zimbabwe, from those who do it as a side hustle, smallholder farmers who rely on it as their only means of income, all way to commercial operations. Whatever the case might be, all of these players need suppliers and markets to do business which for the large commercial farmers might not be too difficult but for those who run small to medium operations, it is one of the biggest challenges. To bring all parties involved closer together, a local agricultural company called Cholsas launched an e-commerce website earlier this year in order to bridge that divide.
What is Cholsas and what is it offering?
Cholsas is an agricultural B2B e-commerce marketplace that allows agricultural merchants and service providers to market and supply their goods/services in bulk to local farmers. The startup also provides registered farmers with access to sell their crops in huge quantities to different markets under one platform. In addition, Cholsas is an online distributor for multiple trusted brands.
On the company’s e-commerce site, you can get just about anything from agricultural inputs stretching from veterinary chemicals and aids, packaging, irrigation all the way to machinery and stock feed.
What motivated the team from Cholsas to build the platform is how fragmented things in farming are in Zimbabwe for both commercial and small-holder farmers. An example of this is if someone is just starting out in let’s say, horticulture. One might not know where to get seedlings and might settle for the first supplier they come across until they are exposed to other players on the market. Only then will they be able to do things like price and quality comparisons.
“There’s lack of seamless awareness of all existing input brands nationwide hence the inputs become scattered leading to lack of proper price and quality comparison and sometimes more time is wasted on procuring inputs yet many farmers still end up buying from the supplier not of their choice.”
Cholsas
On the logistics side of things, Cholsas has partnered up with local startup Yaita to offer deliveries to farmers, which could be free of charge depending on the size of the order. Yaita brings to the table payment and tracking tools. Speaking of payments, Cholsas accepts USD (VISA & Mastercard), Zimswitch, EcoCash, OneMoney and cash payments (USD/RTGS).
We also encourage farm produce buyers to join the platform and professionally procure supplied produce directly from the farmer hassle-free. We work with established brands as our partners in order to provide you with a quality service.
Cholsas
Cholsas’ goal is to onboard all local agricultural manufacturers, traders as well as international suppliers that are interested in supplying to Zimbabwean farmers and other agricultural stakeholders.
You can check out Cholsas’ platform with the link *here*
