Farming is a feature of every tax bracket in Zimbabwe, from those who do it as a side hustle, smallholder farmers who rely on it as their only means of income, all way to commercial operations. Whatever the case might be, all of these players need suppliers and markets to do business which for the large commercial farmers might not be too difficult but for those who run small to medium operations, it is one of the biggest challenges. To bring all parties involved closer together, a local agricultural company called Cholsas launched an e-commerce website earlier this year in order to bridge that divide.
What is Cholsas and what is it offering?
Cholsas is an agricultural B2B e-commerce marketplace that allows agricultural merchants and service providers to market and supply their goods/services in bulk to local farmers. The startup also provides registered farmers with access to sell their crops in huge quantities to different markets under one platform. In addition, Cholsas is an online distributor for multiple trusted brands.
On the company’s e-commerce site, you can get just about anything from agricultural inputs stretching from veterinary chemicals and aids, packaging, irrigation all the way to machinery and stock feed.
What motivated the team from Cholsas to build the platform is how fragmented things in farming are in Zimbabwe for both commercial and small-holder farmers. An example of this is if someone is just starting out in let’s say, horticulture. One might not know where to get seedlings and might settle for the first supplier they come across until they are exposed to other players on the market. Only then will they be able to do things like price and quality comparisons.
“There’s lack of seamless awareness of all existing input brands nationwide hence the inputs become scattered leading to lack of proper price and quality comparison and sometimes more time is wasted on procuring inputs yet many farmers still end up buying from the supplier not of their choice.”
Cholsas
On the logistics side of things, Cholsas has partnered up with local startup Yaita to offer deliveries to farmers, which could be free of charge depending on the size of the order. Yaita brings to the table payment and tracking tools. Speaking of payments, Cholsas accepts USD (VISA & Mastercard), Zimswitch, EcoCash, OneMoney and cash payments (USD/RTGS).
We also encourage farm produce buyers to join the platform and professionally procure supplied produce directly from the farmer hassle-free. We work with established brands as our partners in order to provide you with a quality service.
Cholsas
Cholsas’ goal is to onboard all local agricultural manufacturers, traders as well as international suppliers that are interested in supplying to Zimbabwean farmers and other agricultural stakeholders.
You can check out Cholsas’ platform with the link *here*
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11 comments
Ah, ko their website keeps crashing my phone
Sorry for sounding regressive, but such innovations for our ‘vodoo economy’ are far from making any difference.
There’s still a long way to go until people begin to like formalised things or technical.
You maybe right but with my understanding of how fast digitalization is going, it will only take 5 years for such a platform to be a necessity for all farmers. I have used the platform on a couple of occasions and the services was spectacular. The team is really good.
Zimbabweans are far from IOT, they still prefer face to face, zve online buying and selling tichiri kure.We still prefer ku kwira kombi kuno withdrawer ZWL200 ku bank then go into shop and buy bread nemari yacho than kungo swiper😆😆😆😆
Speak for yourself!
I have said it before: Zimbabwe is not a person. 9ne idiot cannot represent everyone.
This is agriculture. It moves millions. Zimbabwean commercial farmers and any financial smart person can use Cholsas with their eyes closed. Its faster, cheaper and saves a lot of time. I ordered fertilizer, seeds from Eazi Seeds and a bunch of agrochemicals, I didn’t even have to leave the farm. It might take time for everyone else to catch-up but this really looks like a very essential tool for the future.
The guys just replicated the idea of FARMHUT BY RYAN KATAYl and team.Agriculture as an industry is very diverse they is more to be done technically than websites and emails.After all how does these benefit a farmer in Dotito using 2g.
If they are targeting ma farmers madiki akaita seni.firsty they should change their name we are not good at reading hatina kuenda ku xul.(2) as long as their statup is all internet based it is bound to fail and will fail because there’s no good internet mumamisha umu unenge ungori pa 2g chete kuti ndizombokwira gomo kuti ndivhure site ndotoona kuri ku waster tym
(3) varimi vashoma vanemafon anopinda panet especially kuside kwangu inini ma fon akazara kuno maKGTEL e$15 aye vashoma vacho vanawo chinongodiwa imomo iwhatsapp chete.so all those things considered wht these startups are is wasting money and resources they should first understand their market, do research. For example there’s a guy kwandinogara named or nicknamed juma muchawa, just call that guy tell him zvaunazvo be it beans sunflower etc next thing you know he’s there with his pick-up truck and and a buyer cash in hand sometimes cash inozouya later bt inouya mostly within a day or 2.ndovanhu vanofanira kutsvagwa nema startup aya mobatsirana kana aramba munomubira fon
Share juma’s contacts please 0781169961 Brenda
This thing is a masterpiece. Most of the people commenting commented without even trying to us it. This is way cheaper than going to the shops like I used to do. Handichadzokera kuchinyakare Zimbabwean agriculture is developing and I am developing with it. Haitombonetsi kushandisa Cholsas yacho. Problem ndeyekuti tirikuvhunduka technology. If you can read this you can use the platform. Tinosvika rinhi tichimhanyisana nemapadza when others are doing better. Well done Cholsas, you are doing well. Keep up the good work, this in due course will be a major player in Zimbabwean/African/Global agriculture. ZIMBABWEANS LETS LOOK FORWARD AND SUPPORT OUR OWN.