The following sections cover Thrive Agric’s progress and updates since the last subscriber meeting held on 9 & 10 October 2020. The November subscriber meetings held on Friday and Saturday, 6 & 7 November 2020, on a live Zoom call led by Adia Sowho, CEO and Ayo Arikawe, co-founder of Thrive Agric.
Why has Thrive Agric been unable to pay subscribers
Thrive Agric is behind on subscriber payouts because of the significant negative effects COVID-19 had on agricultural businesses in Nigeria. The subsequent movement restrictions coincided with the start of our dry season operations and halted vital aspects of business operations.
The combination of expensive and limited access to inputs, restricted distribution, and constrained markets caused reduced harvest quality and quantity, losses in crops and livestock consequent of COVID-19 lockdown restrictions created a ripple effect through our operations, affecting critical revenue-generating events.
Thrive Agric continues through its turnaround and maintains a firm commitment to paying out all subscribers.
When will subscribers get paid?
The payout timelines are available at payout.thriveagric.com.
It is important to note that subscriber payouts due in April, May, June, July and August have been made. This is massive progress and a sign of good faith to all our subscribers that pending subscriptions will be fully paid: Capital and Returns.
As of today, 9th of November 2020, Thrive Agric pending payouts are due from September 2020, and we have begun making these payouts in steps. To clarify, some subscribers in September have received payments, and we are continuing to make these payments in batches. We firmly believe we’ll correct the effects of the pandemic and emerge a stronger company moving forward.
I’m due in September, October, November, but haven’t received my payout.
We are doing everything to make payouts happen as fast as possible, this is an urgent priority for us. To make this possible, we are aggregating all debts, inflows, and outflows to prioritize all subscribers payouts. We have also raised bridge funds via institutional investors who recognize our track record to hasten these repayments.
We are now making payouts in batches based on farm subscription due-months. A subscriber due in September will be paid alongside other September subscribers regardless of the exact due date. After September subscribers are paid or refinanced, October payouts will commence and so on.
We have created and shared a payout queue portal for pending subscribers to view their payout month commencement and also their queue number within the month. You can find this payout queue at payout.thriveagric.com. To use this dashboard, you need your associated Thrive Agric email address and the order number for your specific subscription. If you have trouble using the dashboard, please watch this short demo video.
Subscribers have heard that Thrive Agric is showing preferential treatment to some subscribers by calling them directly. Is this true?
In addition to the monthly zoom calls, Thrive Agric has made two sets of calls to subscribers.
One set of calls were to the 50 largest subscribers with extensive subscription portfolios. We have had refinancing and rescheduling conversations with these subscribers so that we are able to pay more individual subscribers. It is important to note that the majority of these 50 subscribers are institutional investors.
The second set of calls we made were to 14 subscribers who reached out to us with evidence of urgent health emergencies. Although we were making payouts with the payout schedule in order of maturity months, we thought it human to make a concession to these subscribers. We will however, not make any more of these emergency payouts because we have seen the disruption it causes to other pending subscribers who consider it preferential treatment. We will strictly stick to the payout queue.
