Esoko

Esoko is a technology platform and consulting service that helps organizations profile people and manage the information flows between them.

Esoko's focus is on agricultural value chains with the explicit goal of improving the transparency of markets and the operational efficiency of organizations.

The founders believe mobile phones provide an unprecedented and disruptive opportunity to change how markets work for both businesses and consumers.

On one hand, Esoko collects and provides content such as prices, bids and offers, weather, and agricultural tips to which users can subscribe. On the other, Esoko provides a powerful set of tools so that organizations can manage their own information and content: not only pushing out alerts and advisories to the field, but also tracking information from the field (like activities, compliance, profiles).
Smallholder farmers can sign up to Esoko to receive a package of weekly advisory services. This typically consists of current market prices, matching bids and offers, weather forecasts, and news and tips.

Not only can farmers negotiate better prices, choose different markets, or time sales better, but they may also participate in outgrower schemes through Esoko profiling and reputational history. The goal is simply to put more money into the hands of smallholder farmers, and try to address the information asymmetry that exists where farmers are frequently disadvantaged price-takers, often selling at a loss. After receiving better information, income improvements for farmers are estimated to be between 10-30%. Sometimes individual sales to new markets can increase by 100%. Esoko is not trying to remove the important role that traders must continue to play, but believes a more transparent system will reduce the overall time to market for goods, improve margins for all, and create an ecosystem of facilitation and brokering.