Ghanaian Agritech Firm Shares Feedback on Expansion Strategy Developed by MBAs

In March 2019, AgroInnova had a truly profound information exchange and experience with a student consulting team from Georgetown University as part of their Global Business Experience (GBE). The faculty-led engagement matched a group of 2nd year MBA students with AgroInnova with the primary focus on providing key strategic recommendations to help refine the company’s operating model and core business offering.

Our team was highly impressed with the in-depth scrutiny and analysis of all areas of Agroinnova’s business, and over a period of 3 months, worked with our team to refine our operating model and crafted a marketing strategy to expand our reach and accelerate our growth. The student team came with strong and diverse technical expertise which added significant value to the consulting engagement outcomes. The team comprised of Pawin Arayavechkit (MBA’19) from Thailand; Karl Delatour (MBA’19) from Haiti; Nikolaus Geihe (MBA’19), from the United States; and Eugene Hwang (MBA’19), also from the United States.

With the Georgetown team, we had several design thinking sessions on developing a viable marketing strategy to accelerate adoption of our product, and scaling up our operations. We spent several sessions reviewing our products, in particular the Akokotakra software. The review process sought to identify ways to increase the customer base locally with monetization as a key consideration.

The next phase was analyzing prospective countries in Africa to target for expansion. A comparative analysis based on GDP per capita, purchasing power parity, and other criteria were used to rate the countries (good, average, poor). Nigeria, Cote D’Ivoire and Guinea were the main expansion targets analyzed. Other decision included Economic Growth prospects, Political Stability, Internet usage/penetration, innovation index, Agricultural Value Addition and employment in Agriculture.

The practical analytical framework developed by the Georgetown University Student Consulting team is instrumental to AgroInnova’s expansion strategy and we plan to consult it regularly as we work to successfully pilot the software in Ghana. We will then gather and review the lessons learned, refine where necessary and plan for an expanded implementation to the target markets identified.

As a startup, this experience was very fruitful for AgroInnova and has positioned us to execute our marketing and expansion strategy with confidence. We commend Kosmos Energy Georgetown University and Hilltop Global Group for providing us this practical learning opportunity.

Extracted from: https://agroinnovagh.com/excellent-work-working-with-georgetown-university