Partnerships in Review: Friends Shouldn’t Become Business Partners BUT…

Nampo 2025 is nearly here, and #SwiftVEE looks forward to reconnecting with clients, colleagues, and friends. Regardless of the significance attributed to the largest Agricultural Trade Show in the Southern Hemisphere, #Nampo serves as a poignant milestone for Agri businesses of all shapes and sizes. It's an essential time to reflect on one’s journey and the factors influencing one’s trajectory.

I am reminded of our starting point in 2019, SwiftVEE was an agricultural anomaly received with scepticism when claiming that the future of livestock and game trading would happen digitally, within the palm of one’s hand. There was ample evidence to treat us with incredulity – livestock trading had remained unchanged for over 100 years, and it was inconceivable that a Cape Town based start-up would change this. However, for reasons unknown (and certainly unattributable only) to me, SwiftVEE has grown 100% year-on-year since launching. We operate in more than four international jurisdictions and have evolved from Agri anomaly to Pan-African market leader.

Along our journey, we have spun off several digital offerings; a noteworthy platform being PrysWys, a direct-to-consumer agricultural inputs marketplace which has received incredible traction. While 2025 is still unfolding, we have already received two international accolades.

·      Best Agtech Company in Africa at the 2025 African Chamber of Commerce SME Awards;

And

·      Finalist in Top Digital Business in Africa Category 2025 of the Africa Tech Summit

Thinking back to the driving force behind our trajectory, it certainly wasn’t the prospect of financial reward or international recognition. What galvanized consistent effort late at night when no one was watching and early in the morning when the world slept has remained unchanged since inception:

What drives us is the personal relationships interposed within our mission to reinvent value chains through technology. We genuinely and authentically feel privileged to be of service to others.

As CEO, it is my colleagues who’ve entrusted their future to my decisions, which inspires me to exceed known limits and strive for the superlative. As a business, it is our clients and partners who have entrusted us to provide them with technology that enables them to sell profitably and produce cost-effectively.

Of the many fantastic partners we’re looking forward to seeing at Nampo, special mention must be made of FarmRanger – a Cattle Tracking technology business which follows a similar trajectory to our own.

Farm Ranger, established out of necessity to mitigate livestock theft, adapted GPS and Geo-Fencing technology to create an evidence-based solution to protect farmer’s livelihoods. Similar to SwiftVEE, FarmRanger had its fair share of challenges entering the market and validating an innovation to sceptical stakeholders.

Today, FarmRanger is a market leader responsible for preventing thousands of attempted stock-theft incidents each year. The National Livestock Theft Prevention Forum estimates stock theft accounts for R1 bn-R3 bn in annual losses to farmers. NLPF cites the inability to track livestock and isolate theft incidents in real-time as the primary impediment to theft prevention. FarmRanger’s stock theft solutions solve this problem with a multitude of security products custom-built for purpose.  Their technology iterates and advances each and every year, recently launching the FarmRanger App, which won MTN Agri App of the Year 2024.

Casual observers would be impressed with FarmRanger’s innovative approach to product development. However, what is truly remarkable is FarmRanger’s innovative attitude towards partnership.

We first met FarmRanger in 2021 when launching SwiftVEE’s first iteration of Online Auction Advertising. A service that promotes vertical Agri products to our audience of roughly 200,000 farmers digitally. On our first day of Go-Live, our Online Auction Advertising service was over-subscribed with partnership requests and success seemed imminent. In our hubris to launch, we overlooked a major blind spot in our advertising service; Tracking technology to measure the efficacy and engagement of partner campaigns.

This was a major stumbling block! There’s no point having a unique audience to promote vertical Agri products if you can’t measure the efficacy of partner campaigns. FarmRanger was a unique partner to SwiftVEE during that time who patiently worked with us to iterate Ad Campaign tracking technology for what today is an incredibly successful and effective advertising service. Their gracious attitude would be counterintuitive to anyone who has not experienced the challenges of innovation first-hand. But in FarmRanger’s own words – “It’s a journey when you innovate, and we’ll walk the road with you to get there. We think the tracking metrics will validate our marketing instincts and we’ll give you the opportunity to prove us right”.

Business is a competitive and brutal world that often brings out the worst in people. It is for this reason that it is regularly advised, “friends should never become business partners” – a rule I often endorse. However, the challenges of business, with all the pressures of competition, sometimes create moments where unexpected decency and kindness in collegiality propagate. The best example of this is reflected in our partnership with FarmRanger, who remain Platinum Online Advertising partners to this day. While we cannot take credit for their incredible success, we’d like to think advertising to our unique audience through SwiftVEE’s Online Auction Advertising accelerated the inevitable. We appreciate their support throughout our journey.

It's true – friends shouldn’t become business partners… BUT… There’s nothing wrong with business partners becoming friends.

We look forward to reconnecting with FarmRanger and our many other fantastic partners, clients and colleagues at #Nampo2025 next week.

Visit SwiftVEE at Stall 17 in the Nutrifeeds Hall and FarmRanger at Stall 40 in the Nampo Hall at Nampo.

Make your way to the Nedbank Booth on Wednesday, 14 May between 12:30 – 14:00, where an exciting partnership will be announced live to press and media – the first of its kind for SA Agriculture.

See you at #Nampo!

Here’s to a great 2025 ahead!