"Even a Small Amount of Money Can Make a Difference": Why We Invest in Imara Tech
This summer, our Executive Director Gwen Straley is running 50 kilometers to raise $50,000 for 3rd Creek Foundation Partners. Funds raised go towards affordable loans that allow businesses to grow and have meaningful impact in their communities. I spoke with Elliot Avila, Co-Founder of Imara Tech, a long-term partner of 3rd Creek Foundation, to hear what impact this kind of investment can have firsthand.
Imara Tech is a Tanzanian company on a mission to make agricultural technology available, affordable, and accessible to smallholder farmers. Co-founded by Elliot Avila and Alfred Chengula, the company designs and manufactures equipment that reduces post-harvest labor and helps farmers build sustainable incomes.
Ani: To start off, could you tell me why you started Imara Tech and the problem that you were trying to solve?
Elliot: We started Imara Tech to address issues of intensive smallholder labor on smallholder farms. As a student I was designing a technology that would assist women smallholder farmers in post-harvest processing by reducing labour and losses. At the end of that project, we knew we had something but no one would ever benefit from it unless we made it available. So we started Imara Tech to make and sell these technologies that people could benefit from. When 3rd Creek first stepped in we were really trying to be a startup in the sense of pursuing very big growth. Our ambition was to reach every farmer. We'd sold 50 machines but we were trying to sell 5 million. In 2020 we had huge growth and sold around 240 machines. In 2021 we crashed and sold half that, even though we had twice the team. So, we stripped everything back to the fundamentals and focused on just running the business as a small business. That's where 3rd Creek stepped in again, with a term loan over a five-year period.
Having investors who, when we were at our lowest point, were willing to say "we'll give you some capital to try this out and make it work", was invaluable for us. I think we wouldn't have gotten through that period without that.
More recently, another re-investment enabled us to unlock a lot more grant funding, which is unrestricted so we can use it for CapEx and for operations. The need came up very last minute and Gwen managed to get it done in a five-week timeline, which is amazing.
We’ve begun selling our machines in DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo]. There's obviously conflict and poverty going hand- in- hand and reinforcing each other there. For us to be able to send machines and provide training to youth and women in Eastern Congo is a milestone for us, and it's totally aligned with the impact we're trying to have. Even though it's only 100 machines, there are 5,000 farms at least that will be using these machines and now practicing agriculture in a much more modern way.
The issue we're trying to tackle is not new – smallholder agriculture has been stubbornly unchanging. But the pace of change when a solution comes in can be extremely rapid and profound. Someone gets one of these machines and within a year they're building a modern home and they're investing. It's not the work of decades. It can happen really quickly, with a relatively modest business playing a role in that.
Ani: That’s wonderful to hear. You've touched on this, but what would you say has been the biggest challenge of building Imara Tech?
Elliot: I think the biggest challenge has been understanding the pathway that our company had to grow to really achieve its goals. Changing our expectations and focusing on the business and its fundamentals has been the best decision we've made. I feel like we've achieved a lot, and we've built it in a way that can sustain itself and keep growing. We still have a big task ahead, but it feels like we've also set ourselves up to address it. Ani: And what obstacles do the farmers you work with still face? Are there other challenges you're trying to address?
Elliot: There's a lack of mechanization across all the different parts of farming. We've focused primarily on post-harvest, and we're also trying to get into the planting side of things, because that's still done manually.
There's a technological need driven by a lack of awareness. So when we sell machines — often with partners — we'll organize trainings to sensitize people about what this technology does and how it can be impactful and then teach them how to use it mechanically and also as a business. Our partners have been essential in spreading awareness and changing public perceptions of what is possible.
Affordability is still a barrier. We have partners that offer finance and partners with projects that subsidize the equipment. The Congo machines were subsidized through a programme where farmers paid 20% of the cost and the other 80% was covered.
Ani: We were so excited to hear you were working in Congo. Thinking to the future, what's your vision for the farmers you work with?
Elliot: I don't think smallholder farming in its current form can or should exist decades from now. I think every farm in the future will be mechanized, and we have a role to play in making those technologies available, affordable, and accessible.
For the farmers, it's about seeing small-scale agriculture transform from a subsistence-associated activity to small-scale commercial enterprises that provide a dignified livelihood — a way for people to work, develop their families, and develop their lives.
A dignified livelihood is one where you earn an amount that allows you to invest in yourself and your future — where you're actually growing opportunities and you are proud of the work and the contribution you make.
I think both of those things are things our customers get. They're able to pay off their product within a season, some of them multiple times over. And they're doing so by providing this service to their entire community. One person gets the product, and for them it's a business, and yet the whole community can actually benefit from it. It's cool to be that provider where everyone gets a piece of the machine.
Ani: Do you have a story you can share where Imara Tech has benefitted a family and a community?
Elliot: I remember Bertha, a mother of two. Before she had the machine, Bertha and her children would thresh the maize by hand. She told us the children didn’t have time to enjoy their childhoods, to play or study, and their hands would hurt from the work. With the threshing machine, she saves valuable time and her children are free to enjoy themselves. Bertha has turned her machine into a profitable business, offering the service to others in the community and earning income to pay her children’s school fees.
Ani: What would you say to anyone who’s thinking about investing in a company like Imara Tech?
Elliot: I would say that even a small amount of money can make a difference. It's thanks to investors like 3rd Creek that we've been able to build this company that brings a solution to something which has gone unaddressed. Looking at Imara Tech, a company that sells machines for rural Tanzania is not the first place where many people would look to invest their money, and yet there's an opportunity there, both for supporting small businesses locally and for creating this huge amount of impact. And it doesn't take very much to unlock those opportunities and provide those chances.
