OKO saw an impressive 6x growth in the number of paying customers from 2020 to 2021 and is continuing to expand its reach in 2022, with new crops covered, and new partnerships signed with financial institutions providing agricultural loans to insured farmers.
It has now closed an extension round of US$500,000 and announced plans to launch in the Ivory Coast with existing partners Orange, Allianz and Touton. The extension round came from global impact-tech accelerator Katapult, along with three business angels – Guillaume Leenhardt (CEO at Gentle Finance), Henry Allard (CEO of Filhet-Allard Maritime), and Lionel Dorie founding partner of Augusta Energy Group). OKO’s seed investment was secured in April 2021 and was worth US$1.2 million.
“Ivory Coast has always been a priority market for us, so when we saw the opportunity to launch OKO there this year we jumped on it. We are bringing strong partners to make this expansion a success and we have big ambitions for the months to come,” said Simon Schwall, Co-founder and CEO of OKO.