Interview: Miryam Adni, Wasit. Empowering a New Generation of Farmers With FinTech and WhatsApp tools

The interview with Miryam Adni, Founder at Wasit, a startup from Estonia, creating a fintech platform connecting small-scale farmers with retail investors for sustainable agriculture.

You can listen to the episode with Miryam Adni on EmpoWomen Podcast:

Or read the interview.

Elevator Pitch

My name is Miriam Adni, and I’m the founder of Wasit. Wasit is a platform between FinTech and AgriTech that facilitates financing for small-scale farmers in Africa by enabling a revenue-sharing model with investors. Our main goal is to turn these small farms into investable opportunities.

What inspired you to start Wasit?

I’m originally from Morocco and have been living abroad for about nine years. At some point, some friends and I started thinking about investing back home in agriculture. As I began researching and talking to farmers, I learned about the huge gap between small and large farms. Small farmers make up 70% of the farmers in Morocco and Africa in general, yet they earn so much less than the big farms.

Looking at this gap, we started thinking: what if we could find a model that aggregates these farmers to give them the power of the big ones, while also providing financing that truly works for them? Then, I thought about how I could bring my skills in product management and tech to enable this. I guess this is how it all started.

How does the business model work?

Our financing is based on a revenue-sharing model that farmers have used for hundreds of years with family, friends, or suppliers. They get an amount of money, and when they harvest, they split the profit with the person who funded them. We are building this model at scale using technology.

Trust and tracking are key, which is why it traditionally happens between friends and family. We mimic this by building a smart agent that continuously checks in with the farmer via WhatsApp and tracks how the project is going, sometimes offering advice. Our model finances the projects, we split the profits at the end, and we bundle these opportunities for retail or institutional investors.

How big is the market for small-scale farmers?

Small farmers are those who farm less than five hectares of land, and they make up about 70% of the farmers in Morocco. It’s similar in Senegal and other parts of Africa. If you look at a satellite map, you can see how the land is split into many small plots, unlike in the Netherlands or the US where you see vast, single farms.

Does the tech component create complexities for farmers?

This is the key differentiator in our model: the user interface for the farmers is WhatsApp. Most people in rural areas now have access to WhatsApp, at least once a week. That’s all they need to interact with our platform. We are building our agent with a direct connection to WhatsApp APIs, allowing it to understand conversations in local dialects and structure them into simple progress updates on our dashboards.

Are you focused on reaching the most underserved farmers?

To be honest, we’re starting in regions that are more accessible. The adoption of 4G networks is growing to about 80% in North Africa. We need to validate the model first and change the narrative to show that these small farms can be profitable. We are starting with accessible farms, but over the next two to three years, we want to build a mixed portfolio that includes farms with a lower chance of profitability or with accessibility issues.

How complex is your tech and who is on your team?

Right now, we are four people full-time and three part-time. The four full-time people are the tech team. The deep-tech component is our smart agent. We’re using LLMs and machine learning models to structure and classify farmer messages from WhatsApp to automatically update our operational dashboards.

I knew from the start that I needed agronomy expertise and data expertise. Data was closer to my network from my career in tech, but it was tricky to find the right agronomists who understood rural dynamics. To scale, we are currently relying on freelancers and local partners on the ground.

How do you feel as a woman in the deep tech and agronomy fields?

I felt like more of a stranger in the agronomy part than in deep tech. I’ve worked on many complex, ambiguous tech projects before, so I feel comfortable with the uncertainty of building something new.

Being a woman in both fields can feel isolating, as the percentage is not huge. That’s why being part of the EmpoWomen program has been so great. Every time I’m in our meetings or peer-to-peer reviews, there’s this nice energy and support system, and you don’t feel alone anymore.

How long has the startup been active?

We officially registered the company at the end of 2023, but at that time, I was still in my full-time job. It was a part-time project focused on research. I only moved to work on it full-time last September, once I realized there was real interest from both farmers and investors. That’s when I started thinking about the actual technology we needed to build.

What has your entrepreneurship journey been like?

Yes, this is my first time being self-employed. It felt like my whole life, since I started school, was preparing me not to be self-employed. But in the two years before making the jump, I intentionally surrounded myself with founders—going to events, watching shows about entrepreneurship. I almost forced myself to be influenced. It’s a really nice environment where people are supportive and willing to help, but it was still scary at the start. Now, speaking to users and farmers, it feels like this is the right place and the right thing to do.

What helps you grow and get through failures?

EmpoWomen wasn’t my first program; I did another accelerator in Barcelona where I met a founder who told me about this one. The programs help because they structure the main things I need to learn. There is so much information out there, and you need it in some type of order, especially regarding fundraising. Learning from the experience of others—both expert speakers and other founders—is invaluable. Recently, I’ve realized that most of my learning has been through people. You can skip some of the bad stuff if you learn from someone who has already been there.

What are the highlights of the EmpoWomen program?

One of the things I appreciate most is that I always have someone to go to if I have a question—from the Startup Wise Guys team, other founders, or the EmpoWomen mentors. For example, I wanted to learn about satellite imagery for monitoring farms, and one of the founders in the cohort just gave me a 40-minute crash course. It was super helpful. You have so much access to these really smart women who are experts in their fields and are willing to help.

What are your next steps?

Right now, we are closing our first pilot of three projects. We’re using those learnings to figure out how to improve our offer for farmers and enhance the profitability of their projects. At the same time, we’re preparing for our first official campaign of about 20 projects. We need to collect data from these projects to test and build our model, as data scarcity is our biggest challenge.

How are you acquiring your customers?

Our agronomist first used his network to test a few channels. The one that works best for us right now is connecting with local partners, especially companies that supply inputs to farmers, like seeds or fertilizers. They have the same client base and are happy to connect us because we give their clients better buying power. It’s a win-win situation.

What is your advice for other women founders?

The advice I always heard was to ask for help and reach out, and it is true. Most people will say yes and will try their best to help you. It is amazing how many people are willing to offer help for free, especially if you’re working on an impact project you believe in. There are different people who can help at different stages of your journey, and it’s always beneficial to ask for help and not build alone.

What is the ideal vision for Wasit?

Our vision is to be the trusted partner for impactful investments in agricultural projects that are both profitable and sustainable. This means that if you see a project branded with Wasit, you know it has a high chance of being successful. That’s the image we want to have in a few years.

What is your fundraising plan?

We are preparing to officially launch our fundraising round in September. We are targeting an angel round because we want to bring on board not just capital, but also investors who can open the right doors for us. We’re building in a tricky environment with politics and sustainability components, so we need the right people to help us scale. It’s challenging because we’re trying to change the narrative—this is not a charity project. These farmers have the skills to be profitable; they just need a little support. Once we have enough data, we can aim for higher rounds.

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