Liquid Gold

A little late, but here are a few pics from a few weeks back of our oil press and team.

A while back we installed a pilot prototype of this press in the foothill region between Meru and Kilimanjaro. It was a first unit that we sent out for user feedback without expecting much else from it, but we found out people had been using it more than anticipated. 10 farmers that we surveyed used our prototype press and made an average of 12L of oil each, which they can sell for an expected $50 per person. $600 in new income is not bad for a first prototype!

Solar Mill 1st Prototype

Yesterday we fired up our solar powered mill for the first time! Still working out minor kinks in the motor control but more testing is happening today.

Ministry of Agriculture Meeting

Yesterday we met with the Permanent Secretary and members of the mechanization team of the Ministry of Agriculture in Tanzania. Great way to start the week!

C-Team Retreat

We are finally all in the same place! Had a great day yesterday catching up and discussing the future of Imara Tech. 🙌

Reviewing our Agent Model

As part of a recap for the year, our sales team has been conducting visits to our sales agents to learn about what has and hasn’t been working.

There has been lots to learn from these visits, but the take-aways maybe aren’t that surprising: agents that are well-organized, know the pitch, and consistently follow-up on leads perform well, whereas agents that are poorly organized with lead generation, follow-up, and communicating product information consistently underperform.

What this tells us is that if we want to scale with our agent model, we need to be doing a lot more to ensure that our agents are organized. Providing them tools and training does not appear to be enough; likely we need to closely manage their performance so that these tools are effectively used.

Meet the Entrepreneur Talks

Earlier today our COO Alfred gave a talk about his entrepreneurship journey to a group of 70 young aspiring entrepreneurs at the Imara Tech workshop as part of the Generation Food program organized by Rikolto and Anza.

We have learned a lot from others and it’s great to pass that on!

Return Customers

We came across this tweet earlier today about one of our champion customers, Pastory. Pastory bought one of our threshers earlier this year in March and has been using it as a business. He loved it so much that he bought 1 more MCT in August, and now has placed an order for 3 additional MCTs from Imara Tech to expand his agribusiness and build his #ThreshingEmpire!

Thanks to partner organizations such as Pan Africa Bean Research Alliance (PABRA) and Global Affairs Canada (GAC) for supporting farmers like Pastory with financing to expand their agribusinesses!

Pastory is a youth champion, passionate agribusiness owner, & successful seed producer. Based in Kagera, Tanzania, he sells quality bean seed & provides services with his multi-crop thresher to smallholder farmers, improving their incomes.  #ImaraTech @_PABRA @BiovIntCIAT_Eng pic.twitter.com/R3zMp2UdXH

— Canada in Kenya, Somalia and Uganda (@CanHCKenya) September 29, 2020

By the way, we got an Imara Tech twitter!

Imara Tech on Safari

This has been a huge year for the Imara Tech team. There has been no shortage of hard work as everyone came together to hit our sales targets and test our company and our products against the market. All of this hard work is seen in our sales numbers, which reflect our happy customers and continue to climb quarter after quarter.

And so, to celebrate all of the hard work, Imara Tech went to Tarangire national park! This was a first-time safari for half of our team and it is a pleasure to bring that kind of experience to our staff.

Congratulations to all Imara Tech staff for the great work so far this year!

P.S. Although our wayward CEO (yours truly) couldn’t be there in person, I joined the celebration in spirit from a volcano some 1000km away. Go team!

Carrying the MCT on a Bicycle

Normally our customers carry the MCT around on a motorcycle, which seems impressive but actually is not so much after considering that motorcycles are also used for carrying around couches, refrigerators, entire families, and numerous other heavy and bulky loads.

So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by this, but I am! The MCT fits on the back of a bicycle!

empowering people. Network Newsletter

Imara Tech made its way into the spotlight in the Siemens Stiftung empowering people. Network Newsletter. Check it out here!

By the way, that quote about last week’s sales?

We had to learn from our mistakes and discipline ourselves, but our hard work is showing. Last week we sold nearly as many products as we sold all of last year.

In 2019, we sold 23 MCTs. In week 32 of 2020, we actually sold 24. Boom!