Mayani

Mayani was founded in October 2019 by Josef Amarra and JT Solis, along with co-founders Jeff Barreiro, Ochie San Juan, and Ronald Bime, to build a farm-to-table marketplace connecting smallholder farmers and fisherfolk directly to retail and commercial buyers across the Philippines.

The platform aggregates produce and seafood from a large network of smallholder suppliers and connects them to commercial and retail buyers, cutting out layers of traditional wholesale intermediaries and giving farmers more direct, transparent market access.

Mayani raised a $1.7 million seed round anchored by AgFunder’s Grow Impact Fund — notably AgFunder’s first-ever investment in the Philippines — alongside the IdeaSpace Foundation. The company reports connecting more than 60,000 smallholder farmers to buyers including Shell, Robinsons, and the Ayala Foundation.

Smallholder Filipino farmers and fisherfolk have historically sold through multiple layers of wholesale intermediaries, resulting in lower and less predictable earnings, while retail and commercial buyers have lacked a reliable, aggregated sourcing channel for fresh produce and seafood.

Retail and commercial buyers (including Shell, Robinsons, and the Ayala Foundation) sourcing fresh produce and seafood, and the smallholder farmers and fisherfolk supplying it through Mayani's network.

Mayani built its marketplace specifically around aggregating smallholder farmer and fisherfolk supply at scale (60,000+ suppliers) rather than sourcing from large commercial farms, and its seed round marked AgFunder's first-ever Philippine investment — a signal of validation from a specialist global agtech investor for this specific smallholder-aggregation model.