Agrotoken is an innovative company born in Argentina in the midst of the pandemic. The firm seeks to make natural resources accessible to all people with the ultimate goal of contributing to the development of a fairer and more equitable economic system. To achieve this, Agrotoken created tokens that they define as “the most real and reliable in the world” because they are precisely grains.
“We are a company that mixes the world of agriculture and the world of crypto,” described Agrotoken’s Head of Product Design, Martín Mateo Cerón in dialogue with Coffee & Business.
As the business model was validated, the company began to invest in technology to develop these crypto solutions that unify the world of agriculture with the blockchain universe. The technical need to develop led them to land in Uruguay. “I am Uruguayan, I know the market, I have worked in technology companies all my life and I know that Uruguay is a great goal for that,” said the executive, who said that at that time it was decided to open offices in Uruguay with a small team and multi-disciplinary. The workforce in Uruguay was, initially, five people who started working in October 2021. Now, the strong development of the firm has led it to grow to 35 people and this figure is expected to double by the end of 2022 “The technological hub of the entire company is in Uruguay,” said the Head of Product Design in this regard.
This hub is being developed at Sinergia Design where, according to Mateo Cerón, it was possible for them to implement this “fast and on-demand” growth. “It allowed us to scale up quickly when we needed to,” he pointed out, noting that they are very happy with the choice made.
The firm that to this day operates in Argentina and Brazil will arrive in Uruguay in the coming months. “We are going to launch the Agrotoken product in the next four to six months.”
Their first roadmap is to succeed in Argentina and launch the product in Brazil, something they are currently developing. “The next step is to expand to the United States and gain market share in Uruguay and Paraguay,” said Mateo Cerón.
grains in tokens
There are three players in the field ecosystem, the producer, the merchant (such as a fertilizer sales store or a tractor dealership) and the stockpiles –called Oracles by Agrotoken– who are the ones who buy the production and keep it in their silos.
The producer buys seeds from a store to plant, once he sows and harvests, he takes his production to the store and, from there, it is sold locally or exported to other countries.
Agrotoken’s value proposition in this ecosystem is, through the tokenization of production, that producers are “all the time standing on grains.” As Mateo Cerón explains, this means that they don’t have to go out and sell grains when they don’t want to to buy supplies for their fields.
By being with tokenized production, greater liquidity is obtained, it can be handled with smaller transactions and always count on its grains as currency.
“We work with large partners such as Visa or Santander,” said the director. With Visa as a partner, Agrotoken offers a “pre-funded” card with its tokenized production so that the producer can spend on what they need by deducting those expenses from their card without going through fiduciary currency. “You can buy a coffee with soybeans, corn or wheat grains,” said Martín Mateo Cerón. At the same time, this allows you to have control of your production.
A new star product
Another of the products that Agrotoken is forming with financial institutions, among which Santander stands out, is collateralized loans in tokens.
“A producer can request a loan based on their tokens and use them as collateral,” said the executive. This instrument arrives to solve the problem of access to credit through its production. “The producer can cancel the loan with fiduciary currency and also with his token and in case the date arrives and he has not paid his debt, those tokens are automatically executed, sold and the debt is covered,” explained Mateo Cerón. Today, the product works in Argentina, it is developed in Brazil and they hope to scale it to Uruguay in the future as well.
