Nigerian Agric Startup, Tomato Jos, Raises N1.83bn From Consortium Firm

Tomato Jos, a local agricultural company, has raised N1.83 billion in Series A round funding. The firm which connects local farmers to domestic consumers, got the funding from a consortium of investment firms led by Goodwell Investments.

The capital will be disbursed for the processing and distribution of tomato products. This will empower thousands of smallholder farmers who will work on over 2,600 hectares of land. This is expected to translate to about $1 million as income for the local economy every year.

Goodwell Investments led the round through its West Africa partner, Aliyheia Capital with participation from Acumen Capital Partners and VestedWorld. Reacting to the deal, a partner at Alitheia, Mobola da-Silva, said, ‘’Tomato Jos has chosen the right market, business model, and management to succeed as a truly inclusive business within this management.

"As an agro-processing company that sources from local smallholder farmers and provides access to finance in the form of farming inputs to farmers, Tomato Jos is a good fit for uMunyhu’s inclusive strategy of investing in agribusiness’’. 

Speaking on the fundraising, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Tomato Jos, Mira Mehta, said, ‘’Processing has always been the plan for Tomato Jos, but to get there, we spent a long five years working only on farming and primary production to make sure that we had a really solid foundation in place’’. 

‘’Everyone at the company is extremely excited to take this big step forward into the world of food processing and value-add production’’.

Meanwhile, the Managing Director of Acumen Capital Partners said, ‘’Acumen Capital Partners is thrilled to join Tomato Jos’ Investors to help the company continue to develop a world-class vertically integrated tomato processing operation in Nigeria.

"Tomato Jos is positioned not only to locally produce tomato paste, which is mainly imported into Nigeria but to help Nigerian smallholder farmers increase their income by increasing their yield by 3-4x’’.