UBI App

Ubi App empowers B40 group with financial literacy via community farming through links corporates to push for decreasing carbon footprint by supporting the infrastructure to the community.

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Inspiration

Malaysia's agriculture industry has contributed part of the GDP growth of the country and provides enough food resource and job creation to its people. However, farmers are generally still under low-income household groups (aka B40 Group in Malaysia) where the majority of them still living in poverty. We want to ride on with the new way of working in the sustainability field as well as solving financial issues among low-income farmers. Thus, we have created Ubi App, a platform that connects sponsorship and collaboration from corporates or Agri-tech service providers to low-income farmers to help them generate extra revenue and maximize their crop yields.

The government is looking further at driving sustainability efforts especially in introducing policies as well as both tax and non-tax incentives for the green economy to push for more sustainable investment under the ESG initiative to support Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) plan. Participation of corporates in the Ubi App helps them to fulfill their CSR and ESG requirements besides getting tax exemption from involving in green policies. By connecting farmers to other Agri-tech solutions providers, they can sell their agriculture waste or by-products for upcycling purposes.

What it does

Ubi App empowers the low-income farmer with financial literacy via community farming. Unlike other community farms, Ubi links corporates to push for decreasing carbon footprint by providing infrastructure support to the community, helping them to sell crops and generate income.

By providing a platform to connect sponsors or upcycling agriculture waste companies to low-income farmer, Ubi ensures sponsor incentives are given transparently. Besides, community farming helps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions which is helpful for corporates' ESG reports.

How we built it

Our tech stack is react-native which enables us to build all-rounded mobile apps and web software connecting ESG responsible companies, upcycling agriculture waste companies and farmers. Our software help to summarize which corporate or upcycling company keen to work with farmers, at the same time displays the sponsored company's carbon emission data via cloud sync in order to have more transparency and recording of ESG.

Challenges we ran into

We now have several challenges

  1. How do encourage farmers to join this project, we intend to carry it out in the form of incentive mechanism and sponsorship, but the fact is that farmers face a more serious shortage of manpower. Hence we try to add a platform for them to connect with Agri-tech solutions company to provide more added automation and intelligence system to manage their farm.

  2. How to record and regulate farmer productivity which will significantly impact data collection for carbon reduction.

  3. Since most farmers are in remote rural areas, it is necessary to consider the transportation cost and the carbon emissions produced as both parameters are affected by the remoteness of the farm

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  1. We now have an APP and a web page prototype, and have obtained the approval of the company and farmers. Through the cooperation between the company and farmers, it will greatly help reduce carbon and help more low-income farmers generating side-income.

  2. Now we have two experimental sites, one in Kedah and the other in Selangor.

  3. We have data to verify that there are many crops in Malaysia where supply is lower than demand. And by recommending farmers to plant crops with higher demand for changes in the market, also greatly reduces the dilemma of relying on imported vegetables

What we learned

  1. The real pain point in connecting the company and the farmer and helping them solve manpower shortages as well as tackle the operational and transportation problems in relatively remote areas.

  2. Our market research data will provide better insight to the farmer to make a better decision on how to grow their crops with higher yields and profits

  3. Our app will empower the low-income groups for more job creation and talent development by connecting them to corporate or farming experts. It serves as a middle-man platform to educate and form the farming community.

What's next for UBI App

  1. In the first 1-2 months, we will cooperate with 3-5 farms to implement our software for operational testing. We target to deploy the following feature such as carbon emission data collection, farmer operation data collection, and company carbon reduction support as MVP.

  2. In 3-5 months, we will introduce the pilot test data which related to better revenue growth of farmer and higher carbon reduction effect to the company and farmers. At the same time, we will build app-platform to connect farmer with other Agri-tech service provider to solve their agriculture operational issue.

  3. Next will be a 1-year operation refinement,

  4. We adjust emission reduction precision through data refinement

  5. Cooperate with more companies to help expand farms to bring more low-income farmer groups to the project.

  6. Regional expansion across Malaysia State.

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