Hello Tractor’s Jehiel Oliver Speaks About “Tractors On Demand” For Nigerian Farmers

So when a startup surfaces introducing techn

ology smarts into farming to make it suck less, it gets my attention.

Hello Tractor is a startup trying to do this. The startup is making tractors available to farmers, on-demand.
If I was a farmer and can’t afford to buy a tractor, or maintain one – because doing both are insanely expensive – I send a coded service request to an SMS short code and, within minutes, get a tractor, or any other farming machinery I want.

That is only half of it though, another layer of the business are the kinds of tractors on Hello Tractor’s rotation; Smart tractors, Jehiel Oliver, Hello Tractor co-founder, calls them.

“What makes it smart is that it is retrofitted with a GPS antenna and it is also designed for data transmission within environments with little to no internet penetration,” he told me.

Jehiel Oliver was an investment banker before founding Hello Tractor. He brought on Van Jones as a co-founder months later. Both are citizens of the United States, but are also very passionate about farming in Nigeria and Africa.

Hello Tractor was one of the 11 startups that pitched at the Seedstars Lagos pitch event in  where, MyQ, a startup from Abuja, Northern Nigeria won the top prize.