See the original story in Japanese.

Agribuddy, a startup that offers a mobile app to farmers in Cambodia and other emerging countries to provide them with asset management support services, announced on Wedsneday that it has received US$730,000 in funding from the likes of iSGS Investment Works, Yorihiko “Paul” Kato, several additional corporations, funds, and individual investors. The company plans to use the funds raised to further develop products and systems currently under development and to acquire top talent who can play an active part in the world market.

Agribuddy provides an Android app of the same name to farmers, who then can register their farmland and crops as users allowing the app to automatically calculate income and expenditure patterns, as well as timing and money amounts. In addition, Agribuddy’s own credit scoring function also provides a service that sets credit limits from banks and other financial institutions for buying agricultural materials.

The total agricultural area of Agribuddy’s users has reached just under 190,000 hectares, and they originally started collecting users mainly in Cambodia, but recently they have also begun to accumulate users in neighboring Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, India, etc. This is due to people called “Buddies” stationed in each rural village, making it possible to reach out to and collect data from potential users who are not connected to the Internet.

The company won the pitch competition of the Nikkei FinTech Conference held in Tokyo last June.

Translated by Amanda Imasaka