Karidas Tshintsholo (Khula): Fixing Africa’s Agriculture Supply Chain

04/05/24 • 90 min

In this episode, we’re humbled to sit down with Karidas Tshintsholo, CEO and Co-Founder of Khula!, the pioneering agritech startup dedicated to empowering smallholder farmers through access to markets and financing.
Founded in 2016, the business now enables the trade of thousands of products from hundreds of local & international suppliers on its platform and is changing the face of the agri-supply chain for good.
Khula is a graduate of the Google for Startups accelerator, a past winner of the MTN Business App of the Year and has raised considerable investment from the likes of PepsiCo, AECI and E Squared Investments. But, for the companies’ founder and CEO, the Khula story is one of immense resilience, fuelled by a passion to create sustainable solutions for underserved markets.
We talk about:
Karidas’s humble upbringing and entrepreneurship as survival.
Dropping out of university to become a full-time founder.
Identifying opportunities by deep-diving the problem.
Understanding the country’s agri-supply chain inefficiencies.
Solving for one of the continent’s largest opportunities and convincing the right stakeholders to come along for the ride.
-
Connect with Karidas on LinkedIn
/ karidas-tshintsholo-0301bb78/
Connect with Mathew on LinkedIn
/ mathewmarsden

The Startup Club Podcast dives into the stories of South Africa's leading tech startup founders and investors, their journeys of innovation, failure, resilience, and triumph and is an initiative of Startup Club ZA - the country’s fastest-growing tech startup and investor community. If you're passionate about entrepreneurship, innovation, solving hard problems, backing the change-makers and co-creating a better country, then you're invited to join us! 🇿🇦
Connect with us:
Website - https://www.startupclubza.com
LinkedIn - https://za.linkedin.com/company/startup-club-za
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/startupclub.za/

Previous Episode

Saul Kornik (Kena Health): Solving South Africa’s Healthcare Crisis

In this episode, we’re humbled to sit down with Saul Kornik, the visionary Founder and CEO of both Kena Health and Healthforce, the technology ventures solving the gap in the country’s health infrastructure by making affordable care accessible to hundreds of thousands of patients across South Africa.
Both ventures have achieved significant traction, with Kena Health raising both $2m in venture capital and winning the MTN Business App of the Year award in 2023 - and Healthforce facilitating over 3.6 million nurse consults since inception in 2018. Things are only just getting started for Saul, on his mission to make healthcare available to millions of people across the continent.
We talk about:
Saul’s upbringing and early career.
The pivot from financial services to a career of purpose.
Saul’s 15-year journey in African healthcare.
A deep dive into the country’s healthcare dilemma.
Solving one of the continent’s hardest problems through patience, partnerships and technology.

-
Connect with Saul on LinkedIn:
/ saulkornik
Connect with Mathew on LinkedIn:
/ mathewmarsden

Next Episode

Idan Jaan (Fundrr): Bridging South Africa's SME Funding Gap

In this episode, we’re excited to sit down with Idan Jaan, Co-Founder and former CEO of Fundrr, the fintech platform using smart scoring to provide quick and easy business funding to SMEs around South Africa.
In September 2017 - having experienced the funding struggle firsthand - co-founders and best friends, Idan Jaan and Jarred Noche, had the idea to build a platform to solve this important need for other small-medium businesses.
After bootstrapping the business for 18 months, getting investment rejections from over 70 angels, and facing an existential crisis during the Covid 19 lockdown, the founders' resilience and resourcefulness eventually saw Fundrr get acquired by the country's largest SME lender, Retail Capital (now owned by TymeBank).
We talk about:
• Idan's upbringing, early career and starting a family business.
• Building a startup despite lacking the industry experience.
• Persevering through investor rejection.
• Fighting through an existential business crisis.
• The ins and outs of being acquired in South Africa.
-
Connect with Idan on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/idan-jaan/
Connect with Mathew on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathewmarsden/
This episode was brought to you in partnership with our friends at Aions Creative Technology - South Africa's next-generation venture builder. For more info, visit aions.co.za