Ricult (MIT)

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

70% of the world’s poor are smallholder farmers, and they produce 80% of the global food. However, these farmers are poor and food insecure. By 2050, the world will need to produce at least 50% more food to feed 9 billion people. This dual-pronged problem of poverty and food insecurity is caused by 3 main issues in agricultural value chains: supply chain inefficiencies, financial exclusion, and information asymmetry. Ricult is solving these issues by establishing a multi-sided, mobile e-commerce platform that fills the holes in the agricultural supply chain by providing farmers direct access to financial instruments, input sellers, end buyers, logistics providers, and real-time crop information. As 80% of the smallholder farmers have access to mobile phones, Ricult’s solution is accessible through both low cost feature phones without Internet connections and smartphones.

More Winners

Free Ventures (UC Berkeley)

Free Ventures is UC Berkeley’s first student-initiated non-profit startup accelerator, meant to catalyze the development of young entrepreneurs to innovate and create high-impact, sustainable ventures.

Read More »

Lamprey (UC Berkeley)

Laparoscopy is a form of surgery done through a series of small incisions that is becoming the standard for many procedures. Graspers are important tools

Read More »

CA$HFLOW

CA$HFLOW from Big Ideas @ Berkeley on Vimeo. To combat increasing student debt from rising tuition fees by bringing financial literacy to high schools. CA$HFLOW’s

Read More »

© 2021 Blum Center for Developing Economies

Design by Joseph Kim