[00:00:06] BOK: Hello and welcome to Happy Porch Radio season six. In this season, we’re talking all things circular in Africa. In this episode, I’m really excited to be joined by Sarah Karamsi, who is a technology project lead at Hello Tractor. Hello Tractor is an award-winning IoT platform, help farm equipment owners, dealers in banks and farmers. They started in Nigeria and Kenya. Now, they’re operating in several other African countries, and also in Southeast Asia. One of my favorite things about this conversation, Emily was, we get to talk a little bit about some cool tech. Talk about data and IoT and the use of it in a very African-specific context.
[00:00:47] ES: Yes. I could sense you are nerding out a little bit on all that. One of my favorite things about this conversation was, just kind of Sarah’s attitude towards the problem solving that’s going on behind this project and what that kind of means on a bigger scale and the impact it can have. Yeah, I just could see like the full, sole process behind it. Like this is why we’re doing this because it does this and I really appreciated that.
[00:01:14] BOK: Yeah. I think we also touched on a number of other really interesting and challenging topics, the difference between the African context and the European context, which is one of our themes and we’re trying to – as we’ve always said, we’re trying to approach this season from a position of ignorance basically of like we’re looking at all these amazing things that are happening across Africa and trying to learn what works and the differences between the two different contexts. I really enjoyed Sarah’s passionate talk about taking the technology and the professional skillsets and working out hot to find solutions that are impactful on the ground.
[00:01:51] ES: Yes, she’s quite inspiring and her story about how she started with such a determination, and especially being a woman in tech. It’s just really great to see that passion come through from her.
[00:02:04] BOK: Yeah, definitely. Without any further ado, let’s meet Sarah.
[00:02:14] SK: My name is Sarah and I work for Hello Tractor as technology project manager. I’m loving working with this company because of the amounts of lives that we touch, that is on a very huge scale. What the company does is, we’re an agriculture technology company that connects small farmers who struggle with their land that they have and we provide accessibility to labor equipment so that they can maximize on their land that they have. We also support them with access to mechanization so that they can improve their yields, become more productive and ultimately, eventually get themselves out of the poverty line. That’s Hello Tractor in a nutshell.
[00:03:04] BOK: Awesome! Thank you so much and welcome to Happy Porch Radio.
[00:03:07] SK: Thank you.
[00:03:07] BOK: Really looking forward to this conversation, Sarah. Just to just of really dig into a little bit and sort of set the scene for the rest of the conversation, let’s dig into a little bit about what you mean by where the technology comes in and what you mean by providing things like mechanization and that kind of support? Maybe you can give us an example or something?
[00:03:23] SK: Of course. We have a mobile application. The application is of twofold, which supports the supply of mechanization to the demand, which is the farmers. We have a tractor-owner application that does the fleet management for the tractor owners. We have the booking application that helps farmers get access to these tractors. The mobile application has two use cases. We have the fleet management, where the tractor owner is able to monitor and check the kind of things that the tractor is up to. For example, the route, the fuel, the operator that is operating the tractor.
On the other side, we have an agent that connects farmers to the tractors. We have a farmer who decides that he wants to plow today, so he looks for plowing service. He enters his name, he enters his location, he enters the size of his farm. Let’s say, two acres of land and he sends in a booking request to the tractor owner and the booking is paired and the tractor is scheduled to come to the farm. That’s how they use it. That’s how the app sort of works.
[00:04:45] BOK: Brilliant. I saw on the website, there was an excellent video talking about and giving examples [inaudible 00:04:52] bringing that to life. One of the things they mentioned was that, a very small-scale farmers maybe own something like a big plow, a tractor with a plow a couple of days a year. It’s definitely way beyond their budget to buy that kind of machinery themselves. Is that fair?
[00:05:09] SK: Yeah, of course. Like a lot of the farmers that are on our applications, like 53% I think is the number. Let me just go recheck. 55%, yeah. 55% of our farmers who have actually used our service, they have said that that’s their first time every using mechanization. Traditionally speaking, it’s bull and a cart or it’s like manual hand labor work, person is actually digging through in the land. These are the farmers that are coming back to us and they’re saying that. “This is the first time I’ve been able to do a big chunk of my land, which used to take me days. I’ve done it with in hours.” Ultimately, that improves the yield that you have. That means that there’s more food that they are selling, and there’s more income that they’re getting. Yeah, that is a very factual statement.
Most of the farmers, like a big amount of the entire population of the African continent if you go and look, a lot of them are farmers. A lot of them actually are – because of circumstances, because of poverty and low-income households, they’re forced to resort to like manual labor, digging, spending hours, using a bull and a cart. This is why Hello Tractor exists. Mechanization and automation I creating more efficient production for these farmers, yeah.
[00:06:35] ES: Yeah. Sarah, just for the listeners who might not gully grasp how a sharing application is in fact contributing to the circular economy. Could you describe how the circularity element is kind of part of all this?
[00:06:52] SK: Yeah. If you look at the circular economy, we have the major element in the circular economy, the business, the society and the economy overall. If we’re to tap into our Kenyan economy for example and we have to look at the amount of population that live below the poverty line, I believe the numbers – okay, I’m not going to throw a number. We have a huge amount of people who live below the poverty line. Because food is a necessity, it’s food. Everybody needs to eat to survive. Because of that necessity and because of the circumstances that you are living in, you need to make that income so that you can afford food to eat, and to feed your family.
The role that Hello Tractor plays in a circular economy is that, in terms of the business, we’re providing a very efficient system to both the demand and the supply of the entire economy for agriculture. We’re doing it at a cost that is so low. If you look into – if we were to tap into IoT as a theory and as a product in the global ecosystem, IoT is quite expensive. You need like huge servers that have logs of data. Because you need to wrangle the data, it needs to sit some way, it needs to be manipulated and provided to the users. It also logs data, because it’s like every day use. Your house is connected, your curtains open through a voice commanded. It’s a lot of moving parts to make an IoT product work.
If you look at what Hello Tractor is doing. We are doing it at a cost that is quite affordable. Because of that efficiency that we’re creating, because of that affordability, we’re not ignoring the farmers that can’t afford something like that, and neither are we downscaling the quality for our tractor owners who need to manage and operate their fleet. If we’re to look in the circular economy, I believe it’s contributing towards economic growth. It’s also contributing towards society and uplifting people and taking them out of poverty.
[00:09:08] ES: Nice. Just as a clarification. By IoT, you mean Internet of Things, right?
[00:09:13] SK: Yes, Internet of Things. Correct.
[00:09:17] ES: I feel like half of the people who listen to this podcast is just tech, digi people who will totally understand that. Then it’s like, people like me who need a clarification.
[00:09:27] SK: I’m sorry, yeah. I should have said that.
[00:09:29] ES: For all those people out there. Cool! What I’m kind of visualizing is that there’s this people who have the means to own these bigger pieces of machinery, and not necessarily the need for them all the time. Then there’s a huge proportion of people who actually can really benefit from the use of that machinery, but have absolutely no need for it more than, as Barry mentioned, once or twice a year and have no way of gaining access to that on a permanent basis. Hello Tractor is kind of the bridge, or the middle of the web as it were.
[00:10:12] SK: Yeah, absolutely. I can tell you about a more specific features that we offer to kind of tap into the seasonal side of need for a tractor or mechanization. For our fleet management system, we offer things like – for a tractor owner, there things like, I own a tractor, but somebody only uses it twice a year because of the season that there is higher yield versus like another season where it’s dry, for example. We offer things like route optimization. We provide insights to tractor owners, where we say, “This is the season that your tractors would be fully utilized.” We have something called route optimization, which are seasonal.
We also do something called clustering, where we group the farmers in the area where we make sure that if a tractor is traveling, it’s not traveling to like really widely spread area. We cluster these bookings so that a tractor is used efficiently in that area. There’s also that side of route optimization. There are also things like fuel theft. We’re in a continent, unfortunately, where there is theft of fuel. It’s sold somewhere else. Again, it’s because of how – if you are living in those poorer circumstances, this is how the society works, which is unfortunate.
Yeah, also fuel theft. Even the person who is operating the tractor, we have their details, we have their timings. We plan tractor movements. All of this is purely to just create more efficient use of the tractor. If you go and see a lot of the tractors are government owned, but some are commercially owned. You will find like tractors that are just sitting there, lying, not in use. Hello Tractor comes in and says, “We want to make sure that you’re gaining maximum benefit out of owning a tractor, so we are providing these insights, we’re providing these areas where your tractor could be used more efficiently.” Also, maintenance, like fuel calibration. No matter what interests that a tractor owner might have, we try our best to like help them manage their fleet.
[00:12:36] BOK: Going back to what you said earlier, there’s a kind of a two-sided benefit the farmer, the individuals, the small-scaled farmers getting access, affordable access to machinery that is potentially life or business changing for him or them. The organizations, if it’s governmental or the individuals or whatever that own the tractors are able to maximize and use that resource fully and in theory. Maybe longer term, you’re thinking about, “Okay. Well, that means, maybe you need less tractors overall in order to create the same effect.
[00:13:03] SK: Of course, yeah. Again, that comes with like automation and mechanization. It’s efficiency. It’s affordable, and lower cost in terms of like time and money. Yes, like you said, eventually, we will come to a point where there would be lesser need for these tractors, because it’s being used efficiently. I think if it’s used efficiently, then I think we’re doing our job really well.
[00:13:32] BOK: Yeah, wonderful. I love the fact as well that the way that you’re using that data to do things like optimization and clustering, and solving on the ground or helping to solve on-the-ground problems culturally or specific, the problems like you mentioned fuel theft. By the way, I meant to ask at the start, Hello Tractor operates in Kenya and Nigeria, is that right? Or where does it operate?
[00:13:52] SK: Yeah. We have Kenya, Nigeria. We started off in Nigeria and then grew out into Kenya. Okay. We are in Ghana, we are in Tanzania, we’re in Pakistan.
[00:14:04] BOK: Okay.
[00:14:05] SK: Asia, I think Thailand and a couple of others. But mostly, yes. Nigeria, and Tanzania, Rwanda recently, Kenya, yeah.
[00:14:14] BOK: Excellent. Tell us a little bit about – I’m interested just from a technology point of view in the IoT part that you mentioned. Again, there were some interesting hooks that I saw on the website talking about – there’s a device you attach to the tractors, right, for monitoring. But then you also got issues like connectivity, patchy connectivity [inaudible 00:14:33]. Tell us a little bit about, I guess, how that side works.
[00:14:36] SK: Yeah. We have a device that we install on every tractor that makes it kind of “smart”. Do you know how air quotes get portrayed in an audio.
[00:14:47] BOK: In an audio.
[00:14:48] SK: I’m doing the air quotes. Yes, we have devices that are installed and these devices have a sim card that have a GSM connection obviously. It works just how a mobile phone would work on mobile data. As much as we encourage people to use the smartphones to monitor their tractor movement and stuff like that. It is a fact that those tractors are in areas where there is low to no connectivity. The device captures the data and stores it. Then when they’re in better connectivity, it batches that data and sends it. Yeah, that’s how it works.
[00:15:26] BOK: Really cool and from a development and product development tech, that’s a really interesting problem to be constantly [inaudible 00:15:31].
[00:15:31] SK: Yeah, it is. Yeah. Like in terms of the tech, we made sure that it’s not like data that is forgotten just because of lack of connectivity. It’s important to capture it, so we made sure that it’s captured somewhere. Even if it’s in a local device so that it can get sent when the connectivity is there, yeah.
[00:15:52] BOK: Brilliant. Just to tinge tech very slightly, we’ll come back to that. I’m interested in your story. The role that you play in Hello Tractor and how you got involved.
[00:16:04] SK: Yeah. I have a background in tech. I studied in Cape Town. I did my undergrad in University of Cape Town. South Africa, which is absolutely beautiful. The listeners should go and visit when COVID is less. I studied information systems, and my background is technology. The information systems is mostly about the system of software. I’ve always been excited about process analytics and data analytics, so I consider myself quite data-driven and process-driven. I believe that if you want to really create value through tech, just make it more efficient. Because at the end of the day, you want to make it affordable and you want to make it less timely so that it’s being used by everybody and nobody should be missing out.
Personally, I’m process-driven, I’m data-driven and I’d like to create value through my knowledge and expertise. Hello Tractor reached out to me, I remember, just in like beginning of COVID. Like January 2020. They reached out and they told me, this is what we do, we are in the agritech scene. I had never really tapped into agritech, never, but I remember reading about it. I remember feeling as if, even though I might not see tangible benefit and I do something with my hands to like help a farmer get out of the poverty line, that’s something that very intangible. I remember feeling like, if I did something even if it’s a small amount to help them, then I would consider myself super lucky.
Yeah, Hello Tractor reached out. We had like a temporary project that I did for them. They were graceful enough to accept me and take me on their team. That’s how I got into agritech, but I didn’t come from an agriculture background at all. I remember just reading and I was like, “Wow! If I could do something like that, even if it’s in a small scale, I would love to.
[00:18:11] ES: Thank you for sharing your story. It’s really cool to hear your inspiration and passion behind it. I love the thing you said about making sure the technology is accessible to everyone, that everyone has the opportunity to get the most out of these technologies. I think that, what I see with Hello Tractor is that, [inaudible 00:18:32], this is what we’ve got. How do we distribute it better? How do we make the actual process of using it more efficient? Which I really like. I’ve seen a couple of times that Hello Tractor is being compared to like – it’s like the Uber for tractors. Which the more I hear you talk about it, the less I kind of agree with, because it’s not that – Uber has become this thing that people use when he can’t be bothered to use their own car. Not that they don’t necessarily have a car. Uber isn’t really necessarily a greener option or any of that. I think actually, there was some chat about how the fact that there are so many Ubers on the road now. It means that there’s more cars going around and there’s more emissions.
I suppose, my question about when it comes to Hello Tractor in that sense. With more use of a tractor, there’s going to be more emissions, there’s going to be something of an impact in that space. Obviously, in a sense, it’s like outweighed by the fact that, as you said, the social impact, the increased yields, people are being fed more efficiently. How does that kind of play into Hello Tractor and maybe the business model, the values of the organization?
[00:19:46] SK: I’m glad you brought the comparison to Uber. Because if you think about the Uber market, like you mentioned, there’s like a huge amount of supply of cars. If you look at the market, I can go out today and like use my car as an Uber. It’s so quick and easy. But that just tells me that anybody can do it, and that also tells me that there is a lot of cars out there in the market to have the potential to become Ubers and emit those gas and things that are harmful to the society.
But if you look at the tractor side of the market, there aren’t that many. It’s not something that we have kind of like solved for as a human population to not use cars, and tractors and machinery to operate and help us achieve our goals. But if you, compared to the amount of tractors that exist in an area versus the amount of cars and if you pan out a little, yes, there is a lot of emission and a lot contribute to carbon footprint. But I believe it’s a necessary evil, if I may, because if you look at the amount of lives we’re actually affecting and helping on agriculture side of the economy, and the farmers and even the economy as a whole in terms of growth and improvement, I think yeah, I would say it’s a necessary evil.
Having said that, this is where the route optimization comes in. Because you’re intentional and you’re surgically finding the correct season the correct area, the correct size of the farm. You’re making sure that the use of the tractor is very intentional in terms of – there’s nothing extra that the tractor is doing that is unnecessary. As much as we try to optimize these drives and make sure that they’re not going to other areas, which is a longer route, which is more emission into the atmosphere. It’s still going to be there. We do our best to reduce it through our route optimization.
[00:22:07] ES: Yeah. I very much appreciate that attitude and that mindset. It’s almost admitting, sure, this like fossil fuel guzzling machines is not the perfect solution, but that’s what we have, so let’s use them in the most efficient way possible. Let’s ensure that we are kind of approaching this purposefully and saying, “Okay. How do we just use the data that we have and make sure that we’re thinking about this and not just consuming and using without that, as you say, the intention. I think that’s such a huge part of actually what the circular economy is. Perfection isn’t really the goal, it’s this attitude with which we approach consumption and utilization of things, that I think is so important.
[00:22:53] SK: Yeah. I pray one day we would get Tesla trucks, which is run on solar power. I don’t know. One day.
[00:23:02] BOK: That would be cool, yeah.
[00:23:03] SK: I know.
[00:23:04] BOK: One of the reasons, one of the topics, one of the things we want to talk about with the season is the different in different context. You’ve touched on what a road tractor is doing in Africa, and interesting, in Asia. Where there is this real difference between people who literally can’t afford a tractor and a few days can make a big impact for them. In Europe or here, I suspect that the problem is almost reversed. Everybody’s got a tractor and they’re all sitting around. Most of the farming is large scale and sort of overgeneration small-scale farming as basically being beaten back or whatever the term is.
I’m interested in, do you have any thoughts on how – I guess that’s a general question about that context, like solutions for the right context. You’re talking about really optimizing that with a road tractor.
[00:23:49] SK: Yeah. I mean, we try and make sure that even if you do all of fleet, we try to make sure that it’s used, so it’s not just sitting there. That’s an asset that is not being used, so if it’s not being used, it’s not being monitored, it’s not being monitored. That means, there are things that you’ll receive, you’ll find yourself in a position where you need to repair because it’s just lying there and not in use. We try and offer the fleet management solution with the route optimization that tells you, “Yes, there is a need and there is a huge market that needs tractors.” In the context of Europe – I mean, don’t know the statistics, but I would say that, because it’s on such a large scale, that would mean that the mechanization and the automation of the plowing, and the harrowing and the rowing is also on a larger scale.
The need, I guess in Africa is quite different from the need in Europe. Because of how there is a huge amount of our population that are farmers and in, Europe you can’t say that for continent like Europe. You can’t say that 93% of the continent is like or the country is like farmers. You can’t say that, for example. Please do not quote my statistic. That is a wrong statistic, but I do have the statistics that were – yeah, in the context of comparing Africa to Europe. I think to answer, it would be, Africa has the need for mechanization. It has the need for these tractors. While in Europe, even though you have so many, I don’t think the need is that much because of the amount of farmers that are in your –
[00:25:41] BOK: Yeah. It’s a whole different problem of resource efficiency. Over resourced rather than under resourced. Also, the other thing I’m really fascinated about is to go back to when you were talking about, well, you have the skillset and this passion and understanding around process data and data analytics. And that you got excited about being able to take that skill, that passion and skillset and use it in a way that helps people. That’s one of the other things that I’m personally passionate about and that I think it’s really an interesting for the listener to think about, like how is it as an industry, people who work in product and development, in theater, and even in the creative side of the industry. That there is – I would say, it’s actually responsibility, but there’s an opportunity to get involved and use the skillsets and the things that we can do exactly as you’re doing, by finding a place where we can contribute. I wanted to say basically, awesome and great work for taking the opportunity to make that happen.
[00:26:36] SK: Yeah. I consider myself so lucky, because I remember when I was in high school and I was in grade eight or grade nine. Grade eight. I was so sure that I want to be in tech. Like you know how in grade eight and grade nine, you are picking your subjects. Then [inaudible 00:26:51] you have to pick more subjects. Then in university, you’re like, let’s pick a degree. I was one of the only person in my class who is like, “Nope. Technology for me. This is what I want. I love data and I want to be efficient.” I was focused like tech, tech, tech and then I went to university and as a female in tech at that time, it was quite gender biased to get into tech as a female.
[00:27:15] BOK: It still is.
[00:27:16] SK: Unfortunately, it still is, right? I remember like I was the only girl in my class full of boys in my class. I remember I was the only girl. I was like, “Nope. I don’t care. I’m going to pursue this.” Then I remember even when I went to university, it was nice to see that side of like where there’s more females, but again, still male dominant. I remember when I was pursuing this course, information systems, the reason why I specifically went for information systems and not computer science is exactly what you said. It’s about the process, it’s about the business, it’s about using technology in a system to create value. I remember thinking to myself, there is no industry in the world that doesn’t use a system. Even playing football, there is the training, and then there is the qualification and then there’s a system. There’s an input, there’s [inaudible 00:28:14], there’s an output.
I remember feeling so passionate about my course because of that simple understanding of information systems. It’s a system that can exist anywhere. It exists in the medical industry, it exists in the agriculture tech, agriculture industry, finance industry, sport industry, food industry. Everything has a system. That is why if you think about how you can improve systems to create value in whatever industry, then you’re lucky. You’re doing your job and you can be anywhere and doing it for anybody. That’s why I always stuck with tech. That’s how I saw it as a whole system.
[00:28:56] BOK: That’s outstanding. It’s very eloquently put. Thank you.
[00:29:00] SK: Thank you.
[00:29:01] BOK: I’d love to give that conversation – there’s so much. I think every episode I say this, but it’s such a wonderful conversation to be having. I feel really privileged to be able to speak to people like you. But as we start to think about winding up this conversation, unfortunately, I have two questions I’d like to finish with. The first one and the same question, but from two different ways. From your personal point of view and from Hello Tractor point of view, what’s next? What’s the future? For me, like on a very personal level, I think because I’ve tapped into the agriculture side of the industry, it’s like – I’ll go back to like talking about how food is a necessity for survival. We live in a globe where we have global warming, so much climate change. Like if you take the example of the pandemic, people were just stocking up on food and we’re very driven with like survival instincts as a human population. Food is one of the biggest driving factors, right?
From a personal point of view, if asked look at the future of this industry and me being in it, I believe that if we start now because of the things that the world had thrown us. The pandemic has really opened up our eyes to the kind of things that the world can potentially – I’m not wishing bad for the world, but I’m just thinking like, if we do end up in a situation again where we’re stuck and we can’t get out and we don’t have access to food. There are people who are living below the poverty line, who not only don’t have access on a general day. But now, because of COVID and because of circumstances, there’s lockdown, you can’t supply, you can’t sell your product.
For me, I want to be in a position where I can say, “I laid down the ground work” or “I’ve contributed to something that would mitigate something in the next five or 10 years” I want to be in a position where I can say, “This global change that is going on in the next 10 years, I mitigated some of it and I helped lives in some way for the future.” That’s my personal answer.
From a Hello Tractor point of view, it’s more towards the technology. It’s about having ease accessibility of technology to a wider group of people. We can say right now that Hello Tractor is tapped into every person who is in need of mechanization. We can’t say that because there’s a whole continent out there, not really as much as we’re trying hard, we’re traveling, we’re going out and we’re finding these people. We can’t say for sure that we’ve got in touch of every person.
In terms of Hello Tractor, I believe it’s getting that accessibility to the technology. To just drill further into that, it’s to make the technology more efficient, more flexible, less friction between the tractor owners and the farmers. Easy onboarding, easy understanding, especially like if you talk to like a farmer and talk to them about the potential that can come out of their one acre of land. It’s educating them about how mechanization can help them. Because at the end of the day, it’s also a population that – like I said, 55% of our farmers got a tractor service. It’s opening them up to these possibilities that makes them think, “Okay. I shouldn’t – me, and might my child and my grandchild shouldn’t be a farmer for the rest of their lives. Let’s get them out of that.”
Beyond the technology, it’s also, for Hello Tractor’s future, we want to tap into other countries, like setting devices to other countries, like Asia, India, Thailand. Like beyond that, again, tapping into these markets of farmers that need the mechanization. Yeah, that’s from a Hello Tractor perspective.
[00:33:06] BOK: We genuinely do need to stop the recording, unfortunately, because there’s so much, we could keep going on. But for those who are interested in learning more about Hello Tractor, it’s hellotractor.com. Thank you, Sarah so much.
[00:33:18] SK: Thank you so much for this. I was really happy to be here. Thank you so so much.
[00:33:23] ES: Thank you, Sarah. It was a pleasure.
[00:33:29] ES: Thanks for listening to this episode of Happy Porch Radio. I hope you enjoyed it. You can hear more of our episodes at happyporchradio.com. You can also get in touch with us there, let us know what you think, let us know if you have any ideas or if you want to talk to us about something. We’d also love it if you can share this podcast, review, rate, tell your pals, tell your neighbors, tell everyone.
[00:33:51] BOK: Tell your dog.
[00:33:52] ES: Tell your dog, listen along with the whole family.
[00:33:56] BOK: My name is Barry and I founded happyporch.com and Happy Porch Fund and Support Podcast. At Happy Porch, we do technology and software development for purpose-led businesses and we are particularly excited about the role of digital as an enabler for the circular economy. If you’re working on solutions to the big problems we face today, problems like climate change and biodiversity loss and global and equality, then let’s connect. Visit happyporch.com and get in touch.
[00:34:22] ES: My name is Emily and I am a coach, a facilitator and a podcaster. My projects focus on personal development, innovation for a better world and connecting with nature. My latest podcasting adventure alongside Happy Porch Radio is exploring the world of carbon removal. Find out more about this and everything that I do at emilyswaddle.com or you can get in touch with me at [email protected].
