How a security guard’s comment sparked Nigeria’s fast-growing Agritech startup, Agrovesto

Within the next hour alone, an estimated 4.17 million people — more than three times the population of Mauritius — will be active on Instagram.

Instagram’s pull is no mystery. The platform’s sophisticated image-processing features make everyday photos look polished and captivating. That simple ability — to enhance a picture before sharing it with the world — has helped Instagram become the preferred place for documenting life’s memorable moments.

But the idea behind this now-iconic feature didn’t come from a boardroom or a million-dollar strategy session. Like many transformative ideas, it emerged from an unlikely conversation.

Before Instagram existed, Kevin Systrom had built Burbn, a cluttered check-in app with a tiny photo-sharing option. During a vacation, his girlfriend, Nicole Schuetz, casually mentioned that she wouldn’t post photos on Burbn because her iPhone 4 pictures never looked as good as her friends’. Those friends were using filters — simple tools that made ordinary photos look extraordinary.

That single comment sparked the X-Pro II filter. And that filter became the foundation on which Instagram — later acquired by Meta for $1 billion and now valued at over $100 billion — was built.

Unlikely conversations can birth powerful ideas.

For Nigerian AgricTech founder Bayo Adewoye, the spark behind Agrovesto didn’t come from a product team or a luxury getaway either. It came from a casual chat with his uncle’s security guard — a conversation that would eventually shape one of Nigeria’s fast-growing AgricTech platforms.

“What brought about Agrovesto itself was a discussion I had with my uncle’s security guard,” he said, his voice carrying both pride and nostalgia.

But before that conversation revealed a world of possibilities, Bayo had long been driven by entrepreneurial dreams. 

Young Bayo and His Dreams of Becoming a Businessman

Although Bayo was born into a family that farmed, his parents were not professional farmers. Like more than 40 million Nigerian households engaged in some form of agriculture, farming was a part of daily life — but not a core profession.

Yet, farming wasn’t what fascinated young Bayo the most.

What truly captivated him was the idea of owning and building a business.

“Growing up, I wanted to do business. I already had that mindset from when I was small,” he said.

Still, he followed the science track and went on to study Geology at the University of Ibadan, graduating in 2012.

His compulsory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) posting took him to Cross River State — an experience he described as “one of the best periods of my journey.” It was there that he co-founded Brain Builders Academy, an after-school coaching center for primary and secondary school students.

After NYSC, Bayo moved to Abuja in 2014 to work in his uncle’s engineering firm. When the firm shut down, he joined Ecobank as an Operations Officer. That experience would later prove invaluable when Agrovesto was born seven years later.

“Working in the bank helped me understand the corporate world — structure, delegation, reporting, and how systems function,” he said. “When I started Agrovesto, those lessons helped me know how to approach marketing and how to talk to people.” 

The Spark Behind Agrovesto

Nigeria’s agricultural sector is riddled with challenges — from insecurity, inadequate storage, low access to markets, to poor infrastructure.

Data from AFEX, where Bayo worked for two years, shows that over 80 percent of Nigerian farmers live below the poverty line, and nearly 40 percent of farm produce is lost to spoilage annually.

Yet, despite these challenges, agriculture remains a sector of massive opportunity, contributing over 24 percent to Nigeria’s GDP — the highest of any sector.

In 2018, a simple conversation revealed one such opportunity.

“I was living with my uncle at the time, and during a conversation with his security guard, he told me how they used to buy commodities in their villages, store them, and later sell when the price went up. That process helped his father pay school fees and feed the family,” Bayo recounted.

As the security guard shared the story, something clicked.

“While he was talking, I thought: if this is being done manually, can’t we digitise the process? That’s how the idea came. I thought about creating a platform to digitise buying, storing, and selling commodities.”

It was a simple but powerful concept — one that could solve the problem of farmers who struggled to sell produce due to logistics and location constraints. At the same time, it offered a way for everyday Nigerians to invest in agriculture without being physically involved.

To validate his idea cost-effectively, Bayo needed an experiment.

When COVID-19 hit in 2020 and the world went into lockdown, he seized the opportunity.

“I designed a Google form and told people who wanted to invest in agricultural produce to do so.”

He shared it with his contacts. To his surprise, people responded quickly.

“People wanted to buy commodities, store them, and resell to make profit. That month — May 2020 — I made close to a million naira in revenue just from the Google form,” he said.

On September 3, 2021 — the same day he graduated from Founder Institute — Agrovesto was officially registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC). 

Agrovesto’s Impact and Bayo’s Vision for the Future

Agrovesto now operates across Abuja, Nasarawa, Benue, Gombe, and Adamawa — with plans to expand into Kaduna and Kano. Its mission is clear: to transform agriculture in Nigeria.

In April 2024, Agrovesto signed a significant partnership with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), transforming the company from an investment platform into an ecosystem enabler that trains farmers and helps them access markets.

“Because of that project with JICA, we had to go to the field, meet farmers, understand their pain points, and figure out how to solve market access, storage, and price fairness.”

So far, over 10,000 farmers use Agrovesto to reach new customers.

For the problem Agrovesto is solving, the company was selected for the 2025 MTN Cloud Accelerator Cohort.

But Bayo is not done.

He is building Noma OS — which he describes as “Flutterwave, but for agricultural services.”

Noma means ‘farming’ in Hausa. Noma OS is a comprehensive operating system connecting farmers, cooperatives, financial institutions, and agribusiness players through AI-powered tools and data insights.

“If you want to lend credit to farmers — you can be there. If you provide seeds, chemicals, fertilizers — you can be there. If you offer equipment or insurance — you can be there. If you’re a buyer or exporter — you can be there,” he said.

And why is he building it?

“Because we’ve seen the problems farmers face daily. If they want to access credit, where do they go? Banks won’t give them credit because they have no records. But with a verified database of structured farmers across states, anyone offering credit, insurance, or inputs can access trusted data.” 

Nigeria’s agricultural sector continues to battle insecurity, poor storage, market gaps, and the painful reality that farmers lose nearly half of what they produce. But in the middle of these challenges, Adewoye’s work offers a glimpse of what real transformation could look like. 

By digitising farmers, improving market access, and building systems like Agrovesto and Noma OS that connect producers directly to credit, storage, and buyers, he is modelling a future where Nigeria’s farmers can finally earn fairly — and where millions can be lifted out of hunger through technology, coordination, and a platform born from a simple conversation that proved how powerful unlikely ideas can be.