Turkish startup Tarfin, the regional leader in agricultural financial technology, launched its operations in Romania on April 7. The company said that it focuses on supporting Romanian farmers and suppliers of agricultural inputs by combining traditional distribution channels with technology and financial resources.

“We believe in the power of technology and the added value it brings to farmers and distributors. We chose to expand to Romania because of the local industry’s potential and its development capabilities. We plan to service small family farms with better access to input financing,” said Mehmet Memecan, founder and CEO of Tarfin.

Using proprietary machine learning-based agricultural risk scoring models, Tarfin plans to facilitate the access of Romanian farmers to all the necessary agricultural inputs at competitive prices and the chance to pay at harvest. For now, the startup offers services to distributors and concentrates on closing local deals to facilitate the relationship between distributors and farmers.

“We believe that farmers have crucial importance for our wellbeing, and we have pursued our activities to support farmers and farm operations since our establishment. At this moment, we are in the process of authorization by the National Bank of Romania to extend our services towards funding the farmers,” said Adina China-Birta, General Director of Tarfin IFN Romania.

Tarfin was founded in 2017 in Turkey to help small farmers acquire agricultural inputs, such as fertilizers, seeds, feed and equipment, materials for greenhouses, and irrigation systems. Up to this date, the company has supplied and financed over USD 110 million in agricultural inputs for 40.000 farmers. Moreover, Tarfin has collaborated with over 1,000 distributors.

Agriculture is one of Romania’s most important economic sectors. According to data from the European Statistics Institute quoted by Tarfin, in 2018, Romania was third in Europe for cereal production, with a total of 31.89 million tons. Meanwhile, according to the Romanian Ministry of Agriculture, in the first part of 2021, Romanian farmers harvested a record 15 million tons of grains.

irina.marica@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Tarfin)