#StartupStory: Avenews-GT

Tell us about your startup business. How did you come about the idea?

We come from an agricultural background where we experienced and understood the daily hardships a farmer has to go through to maintain a sustainable business, which led us to come up with Avenews-GT.

Avenews-GT is a digital trading platform based on blockchain technology that enables the small to medium-size farmers to continue to participate in the global market and deliver their nutritious and high-quality food to the world. It connects food wholesalers to food producers directly, reducing distribution costs, creating financial security, and providing chain transparency.

How did you hear about, and what motivated you to apply for the Barclays Accelerator programme?

Actually, it’s a funny story. We applied to the Tel-Aviv program at first and didn’t get accepted, but someone there thought we were good enough to offer us to Yossi Hasson, the MD of the Cape Town program, as a potential Techstars company.

Our motivation came from our will to work with what we consider the most innovative, advanced and community-driven financial enterprise, as well as our shared core values regarding investing in the community.

What is the long-term vision for your company?

Our long-term vision is to integrate the platform completely into markets worldwide. Farmers would profit, food loss would decrease, prices would go down, food availability would increase, and food products would be traceable.

What do you hope to gain/learn from this startup programme?

We hope to form a strong lasting partnership with Barclays and through that partnership implement our solution to the ever-growing African agricultural market, and leverage the powerful TechStars ecosystem into supporting and progressing our cause and business.

What are you most looking forward to in the upcoming 13 weeks of the programme?

In the upcoming 13 weeks we are looking forward to working with the experienced mentors and Techstars team in the purpose of unpacking and dealing with the challenges of implementing our digital trading platform.

How do you define the word "success"?

For us, success is being in a continuous state of creating, while learning from our failures.

We believe that success is not a matter of luck, but that it comes from an ongoing process of hard work and overcoming failures.

For more, check out the Avenews-GT website and LinkedIn page.