LIONESS WEEKENDER COVER STORY
Thola Inc, building a B2B agricultural produce procurement marketplace for Africa
Nneile Nkholise is the founder of Thola Inc, a business founded in 2021 and building the middle ground for mass continental farmer global trade access through a B2B agricultural produce procurement marketplace; that enables global companies to purchase forensic tested and verified climate sustainable goods from African farmers. She was born in Lesotho and grew up in South Africa and she studied towards a Masters Mechanical Engineering at Central University of Technology and Bachelor of Science majoring in Physics & Computer Science at University of Witwatersrand, all in South Africa. She is a product engineer with a specific focus in design engineering and has eight years’ experience in the construction and biomedical sectors, having developed biomedical products ranging from prosthesis to bio-implants. She was the co-founder of iMed Tech, a biotech company specializing in custom-made medical solutions using CAD and CAM techniques. In 2018, she co-founded 3DIMO, a venture backed company that automates livestock data analytics to monitor livestock health.
In 2016, Nneile was recognized as Africa’s top female innovator by the World Economic Forum. She was awarded the South African Youth of the Year by the Office of the Presidency in 2017. In 2018, she was awarded Forbes Africa’s 30 under 30, recognized in the 100 top young Africans by the Africa Youth Council, and awarded Industrialist of the Year in Southern Africa at the All Africa Business Leaders Awards. In 2018, she was inducted as a Harambe Entrepreneurship class of 2018 fellow – a peer-to-peer networking organization backed by a number of partners including US company, Cisco Systems, and the Oppenheimer Generations, a foundation of South Africa’s Nicky and Jonathan Oppenheimer supporting Africans making impact to African prosperity.
LoA learned more about Nneile’s entrepreneurial journey and her impact driven vision for the future.
What does your company do?
Thola is building the middle ground for mass continental farmer global trade access through a B2B agricultural produce procurement marketplace; that enables global companies to purchase forensic tested and verified climate sustainable goods from African farmers. When you look at procurement of African agricultural produces from African countries; it still remains a global export nightmare. On one end you have producers/farmers making goods of quality standards but those goods cannot be exported out of their countries because of a lack of certification bodies that can audit their farms and issue global trade licenses and on the other end you have global businesses that want to procure goods such as organic wheat from African producers but do not have access to information of producers that have GAP certification (global trade license issuing body) and which countries their products are permitted for export to. Hence we are creating an enabling to simplify global procurement & export of African agricultural goods through our B2B global agricultural procurement marketplace where on one end we offer farmers/producers training, auditing and certification of their farms and goods for global export, and on the other hand we offer a marketplace for global businesses where they can see buy products from farmers certified for export to their countries.
What inspired you to start your company?
I've been living in the US for 2 years and often times I would see FMCG goods where I would read that some of the raw ingredients were sourced from African farms; however there would never be any information of specific farms, stories about production; which I believe helps market African agriculture. Overtime I realized that if as a continent we don't own our production and distribution channels; we might get to a point where a lot of indigenous African produce that could shine a spotlight on African agriculture could be poorly marketed and we would make less from trading of products from our continent. Hence I believed there could be an opportunity to build solutions that could first address the inability of African farmers to trade their produce outside their respective countries to countries where there is a need for such goods. Second; create mass skills programs that prepares farms for continuous trading as scale. Lastly; connect tools that enable seamless data acquisition of different farm performance so that at any given time, farmers have the heartbeat of their farms in the palm of their hands.
What makes your business, service or product special?
Despite the giant vision of the company, of being the agricultural Alibaba for Africa; what makes us special is the tech tools embedded in our business model that we have built.
In the past two years we have been able to build a livestock husbandry monitoring system (software) to monitor, and easily audit livestock farms from any part of the world for quality standards. Through an integrated system which collects data through infrared (IR) imaging cameras. The data collected is stored and processed through neural networks using machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to generate unique livestock insights.
The Thola system aims to provide a novel offering for livestock health monitoring and management by:
1. Monitoring the health of livestock in farms by capturing data relating to body temperatures and behavioural patterns with IR imaging cameras;
2. Monitoring the patterns of livestock movement to track contact between infected and healthy animals;
3. Building a multi-regional neural network of such monitoring facilities; and over which ; and
4. Building AI-driven predictive modelling algorithms that identify abnormalities and provide data-based recommendations to assist farmers in mitigating the risk of viral infections.
In addition to pandemic related detections, the data which has been collected and archived can also be used by the farmers for stock monitoring and management purposes.
Tell us a little about your team
Our team is made up of tech-founders who are generational farmers and have sound experience in cross-border goods distribution and the frictional challenges emerging from lack of verifiable integrity data to prove product authenticity. We understand product development & commercialization; with the CEO having previously developed & commercialized medical products through her previous biotech startup (iMed Tech) and built a pipeline for international export of her products.
Share a little about your entrepreneurial journey. And, do you come from an entrepreneurial background?
I'm a second time startup founder but a lifetime product design experimentalist. I accidentally got into startups in 2015 which in grad school, and I had no clue back then about managing any business because I had never had any close contact with anyone in my family and outside, who had started and scaled a high growth startup.
So for the past 7 years; it's been a journey of continuous learning, unlearning and relearning at the speed of light because startups are very dynamic environments where there is constantly new fires burning at every corner and one needs to turns them off. Even when things are going well with the company; there is always a spark ready to blow up in no time.
What gives you the most satisfaction being an entrepreneur?
The opportunity to build a portfolio of work, that I never thought I could ever do in my life. I constantly surprise myself at the things I'm blessed to do now; that I had never thought I would do. Also, the opportunity to connect with other amazing young people from around the world, building impactful companies. It gives me assurance that the world is in good hands.
What's the biggest piece of advice you can give to other women looking to start-up?
"Think big, start small; but just start." Simon Sinek
To find out more about the work of Thola, contact Nneile Nkholise via email: nneilen@3d-imo.com
