March 2021 agricultural “platforms” in a digital era

A NOTE ON PLATFORM SCALE
In addition to the scaling challenges that
Platforms face (as discussed in Sections 2 and
4), this relatively large number of small Platforms 
reflects the maturity level of the market itself. The 
emergence of product and service marketplaces 
into smallholder agriculture is still in its infancy. 
More than 75% of marketplaces are less than five 
years old, and there is a constant flow of players 
entering and exiting the market as they experiment 
with new business models. Proliferation of pilots 
is characteristic of innovation efforts across all 
industries, and might be particularly necessary 
to spur creativity that addresses challenges in 
the smallholder agriculture markets. However, it 
is likely that—just as we see in the tech industry 
more broadly—many of these pilots will die out 
and there will be an eventual market concentration
into a smaller number of players.
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Figure 10: The rise of agricultural product and service marketplaces
Notes:
• Analysis has been done on 76 product and 
service marketplaces with operating in 
smallholder-related agricultural markets 
(excluding digital solutions and coordination 
initiatives); data on scale not available on 4 
profiled models. Smaller and more recently-
emerged Platforms have not in all cases been 
captured
• Many more Platforms exist in developed
agricultural markets. These are out of scope 
of our research, which focuses on agricultural 
Platforms active in smallholder-dominated 
agriculture
• The Chinese market has not been included in 
this research, despite the existence of a large 
number of Platforms operating in rural areas
Source: ISF Advisors and RAF Learning Lab analysis