March 2021 agricultural “platforms” in a digital era

particularly important to drive network effects 
and gain critical mass faster.
3. What core and additional services will 
the marketplace provide?
The services facilitated and offered by a marketplace 
will ultimately depend on the friction points 
the marketplace is trying to solve for its target 
customers in a given value chain and geography. 
For example, produce marketplaces’ core 
services will include marketing and advertising 
produce, managing fulfillment, and processing 
transactions—but these Platforms may also 
provide additional services, such as facilitating 
aggregation (e.g., Farmshine aggregates 
farmer produce), providing finance to buyers 
(e.g.,TruTrade provides traders with financing 
to cover packing, handling, storage, transport, 
and taxes), and sharing information on pricing 
(e.g., Mfarm or Mlouma) or business intelligence on 
expected demand/supply (e.g., Fruban or Aibono). 
Of particular importance is the extent to which 
the marketplace operator facilitates and/or 
provides transport and logistics services. The 
limited infrastructure in many rural settings 
means that most agricultural marketplaces 
have to invest in capital-intensive transport and 
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logistics services that increase cost and limit scale. 
Most smaller-scale operators tend to outsource 
these services to specialized third-party providers, 
often at a high cost. For instance, transport and 
logistics account for more than half of TruTrade’s 
total costs.
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Larger-scale operators, on the 
other hand, often build their own infrastructure, 
including vehicles, drivers, and storage facilities. 
More recently, marketplace operators are starting 
to leverage data and the sharing economy to tap 
into logistics marketplaces and benefit from the 
underutilized capacity of other industry players.