Save My Grandmother Story: The Story of Mazao Hub

The story of Mazao Hub is a story of pain and suffering. Itrnis a story of my grandmother, who could not escape the exploitative buying fromrnmiddlemen and post-harvest loss. It is a story of my own struggles, trial andrnerror just to survive as smallholder farmer, to transport farm produce to thernmarket, a task that was filled with overwhelming feelings of inadequacy andrnhopelessness. It is a story of the relentless determination to fight againstrnall odds, to create an e-commerce platform and to do better, only to fail. Butrnit is also a story of hope, of my friend and I finding the courage to go backrnto the village and learn from our mistakes, to develop an innovative solutionrnthat would help smallholder farmers and transform Agriculture for the better.

The story of Mazao Hub began long ago in the villages ofrnSumbawanga, Tanzania, where my grandmother and I worked as poor smallholderrnfarmers. We faced issues like exploitative buying from middlemen, poorrnproductivity, post-harvest loss, lack of direct markets to trade, logisticalrninefficiency, lack of credit facilities, lack of agronomic support, everythingrnwas trial and error and much more.

 Sometimes, I had tornuse a bicycle to transport farm produce to the market, which was more than 30rnmiles away. This meant that we often lost money, time, and produce due tornmultiple layers of brokers involved in getting goods to the market, each ofrnwhom took a cut that ate into our family's income.

My grandmother's words to me - “When you grow up, come backrnand save us, we poor smallholder farmers” - stuck with me. While others mayrnhave been ashamed of or frustrated by family background, I saw opportunities.

My late grandmother's voice rings in my ears every day. Herrnwords, spoken with a heavy heart, stay with me as I work hard to try savernsmallholder farmers in Africa who still share her struggles.

 I had a dream to makernthings better for her and all smallholder farmers even before her departure, itrnpains me that I failed with my first attempt and she died. My first attempt, Irnstarted an e-commerce platform for smallholder farmers called Sokoworld.comrnwith my good friend of mine, Adelard Urassa as CTO,  hoping to solve her problems and allrnsmallholder farmers in Africa.  Thoughrnour users numbered more than 20,000, we ultimately failed. We thought we arerngoing to make things better for smallholder farmers in Africa by connectingrnthem directly to the market bypassing middlemen but ended up with the same middlemenrnas users not our targeted farmers.

I left the City with a heavy heart went back to my village,rndreading the long journey ahead. I was desperate to learn from my mistakes andrnunderstand why my startup had failed. Working with smallholder farmers,rnagronomists and agro input dealers in the Village brought home the harshrnreality of the situation: Small Scale Farmers in Africa are not getting thernsupport they need due to a flawed local agronomy and agro dealer distributionrnsystem and an unfriendly agricultural Value Chain, which leads to lowrnproductivity, poor quality produce and food wastage. Furthermore, there isn'trnany proper food systems to track quality and data about smallholder farmers.rnThe government is facing the same challenge. Most of the data about farmersrnfrom Africa is based on guesses and inaccurate estimations, making thernsituation even worse. Returning to my grandmother's farm to learn from myrnmistakes was a bittersweet experience. I was filled with a deep sadness, andrnyet, I was filled with hope that I could make a difference and help fix therncurrent system.

I had to go back to the drawing board. I called my partnerrnwith a newfound sense of determination.

“We have to build farmers mapping and farm ERP systems byrnfirst working closely with agronomists, agro dealers, farmers’ associations, farmrnenterprises, food manufacturers and cooperatives - and, for now, we won’trndepend on grants anymore. These guys will pay us, because we are solving a veryrnpainful problem for them”

We began our bootstrapping journey and MVP development earlyrnin August 2021, frantically re-registering our company in July that same year.rnAfter burning the midnight oil, our MVP was ready and we were proud to acquirernour first 10 paying users(manufacturers) in October to December 2021. As arncherry on top, we were accepted into the Tanzania Commission for Science andrnTechnology (COSTECH) incubation program in December 2021. Starting out as twornCo-Founders, Adelard Josephat Urassa (CTO) and Geophrey TENGANAMBA (CEO), wernare now a team of ten, each with a unique set of skills and experience.

We have a combination of full stack software developers,rnbusiness professionals and unstoppable sales experts, with one of our firstrnemployees, Sharon Novatus Makunga, now among the Co-Founders and a companyrndirector. Her commitment and passion to build the product's foundation has beenrninvaluable. We can feel the joy and pride emanating from each of us, a feelingrnof immense accomplishment and relief.

We have grown to become UjuziNet Group as Cloud basedrnenterprise software’s and applications under a single infrastructure developedrnto automate operational activities covering various industries branded based onrntheir related industries. We have experienced immense pain and sorrow as wernhave worked hard to expand our business and develop these solutions, but thernjoy of being able to provide such innovative solutions to help automate variousrnindustries makes it all worth it.

Our First Core Brand is Mazao Hub: SaaS based DigitalrnAgriculture and Farm ERP platform to manage farmers, farming activities andrncontrol complex farm operations, make data-driven decisions, optimize cost,rnimprove yields based on real-time insights and advanced field analytics fromrnplanning to harvest designed for Individual Farmers, Commercial Farmers, Agrorndealers, Farming Cooperatives, Manufacturers, Traders and all otherrnagricultural stakeholders. With Mazao Hub as farmer you can

• Map your contract farmers or yourself as farmer, farms includingrnfarm measurement using mobile App with google coordinates, Seedlings, Plan andrnbudget all the way based on the season from Land Preparation, Sowing,rnfertilizing to pre and post-harvest, storage and all related Good AgriculturalrnPractices based on the crops.
• Manage the entire farm activities and related inventories,rnmonitor farm progress with detection tools, automated agronomy workflow andrnAgribots based on the crops including inventory, weather forecasting reports,rnexpenses, human resources from Land Preparation to harvest and storage - all ofrnwhich can be incredibly draining, but also incredibly rewarding.
• Manage and Monitor harvest, crop collection from farms tornvarious collection centers integrated with other aggregators like logistics tornwarehouses. Connected together with our integrated supply chain managementrnsystems namely warehouse, logistics and delivery, purchase and financialrnmanagement - a process that can be incredibly painful and tedious to undertake,rnbut is also incredibly important to a successful business.

Mazao Hub main functionalities:

a)            FarmrnResource Management (Crop, fields, machinery, people, inventory)

b)            Farmrnoperations (planning, tracking, and analyzing complete crop production)

c)            FarmrnScouting (NDVI Satellite Imagery, pest and disease knowledge-base, photornevidence with geo-tagging)

d)            Weatherrnand risk intelligence (Weather data, weather alarms, pest and diseases riskrnalarms.)

e)            FarmrnFinance Management (invoices, payables and receivables, budget, loanrnmanagement)

f)             Farmrndashboards and analytics (field analysis, yield analysis, crop profitability,rnROI, farm finance KPI's, reports)

g)            Traceabilityrnreport

 Mazao Hub Platform isrnaccessible here and available on Google Playstore as MazaornHub. We have users in Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Congo, South Africa, Kenyarnand Uganda but our headquarters is based in Dar es Salaam at TanzaniarnCommission for Science and Technology (COSTECH) building, 3rd Floor - somethingrnthat was a long time coming, but filled us with immense joy and pride as wernhave grown as a company.

Our Second Core Brand is EMA. EMA means “EnterprisernManagement and Automation”.

 EMA is a Completernintelligent enterprise platform under a single infrastructure to simplify andrnautomate core business processes in Courier business, Logistics, Construction,rnManufacturing, Clearing & Forwarding, Retail and other sectors with theirrnrelated project management modules, CRM, inventory, accounting, Humanrnresources, financial management etc - a development that was incrediblyrndifficult, but incredibly satisfying when we were able to complete it.

Customers can open their accounts here in 3 minutes and select their specific sectors . Register their companies andrnassign roles to their staffs and start using EMA Systems within few minutes. Wernhave covered industry based requirements for each sector starting with theirrnspecific business processes and workflows based on their business environments.rnAnd we will keep adding more features and requirements based on user’srnrequests, business environments covering Africa context or any others duringrnexpansion plan, it also includes analytics & related templates tailored forrnSmall and medium sized businesses. Whereby they pay for what they use monthlyrnor annually - a process that causes us a great deal of anxiety, but also arngreat deal of accomplishment as we see our solutions helping more and morernbusinesses.

OTHER BRANDS:

3.            AdBoxDigital Inc  : A Social Media AutomationrnTool, Influencers Management, CRM, social media management and analytics &rnrelated templates tailored for Small and medium sized businesses. Whereby theyrnpay for what they use monthly or annually. The platform is accessible here - a development that was incredibly difficult, but incrediblyrnsatisfying when we were able to complete it. This company is specifically registered in USA with users in Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya ,Tanzania and we are intending to make it global CRM platform.

4.            UjuziNet:  E-Learning Intelligent Systems forrnhigher learning institutions to enable them create course and sell onlinerncourses including diploma, degrees and even PhDs. The Platform is accessiblernhere - a development that we all worked hard on, and filledrnus with immense joy and pride when we were able to deliver it.

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We welcome organizations and individuals with the samernvision as partners, investors or even advisors. I promise you with you may bernjust may be we might build something like Alibaba or much bigger for Africarnsmallholder farmers. Despite the long hours and hard work that have gone intornmaking this dream a reality, we have pressed on with dedication and have beenrnrewarded with great success.

Contact : info@ujuzinet.com 

 Mobile : +255655973248.