Building business, bean by bean

Imagine you have your finger on the pulse of an industry with trillions of dollars in tangible assets. You have a vision for incorporating cutting-edge technology to revolutionize its financial viability. The snag? Right now, the idea is just a hill of beans.

Argentina-based start-up Agrotoken wanted to bring new financial options to the multi-trillion-dollar agribusiness sector by letting farmers convert tons of soybean crops into a commodity-backed stablecoin that could be spent with merchants and investors.

The company wanted to expand from small start-up to dynamic player, requiring a solid business model and a foundation of reliable processes and methodologies. So Agrotoken turned to Accenture to lay the groundwork for expanding its team and ambitions at scale, without restricting innovation or agility.

With expertise in management and foundational best practices, plus a network of innovators and technologists, Accenture set about co-designing Agrotoken’s business model, operational structure and practices.

First, Agrotoken established its intent to become a well-oiled machine. Via interviews with its founders and dynamic design-thinking workshops, Accenture's team learned about where Agrotoken wanted to be, what hurdles it was facing and which technical questions loomed on the horizon.

Accenture then tapped its Global Services Network of hundreds of thousands of experts to build a technology team across four countries. Their job was to advise Agrotoken on best practices and industry context, so that the company could make well-informed decisions as it developed its tokenization platform and applications. Together they were able to prioritize multiple goals into a roadmap that would help Agrotoken’s product grow to support Argentina’s agriculture industry.

Since launching its tokenization platform, Agrotoken has scaled from 1,000 tons of soy to 30,000 in just a few months. It hopes a new unit dedicated to tokenization as a service (TAAS) will position it to expand beyond grains and into additional commodities—and beyond Argentina's borders, with an eye on Brazil. Today, with a foundation of market best practices, Agrotoken is a blockchain company ready to grow.

Agrotoken’s new unit dedicated to TAAS aims to provide expertise to other businesses looking to utilize tokenization to disrupt their industries. With its early and projected growth has come new partnerships and conversations around expanding the type of stakeholders involved along the tokenization chain; for example, working with a major bank on the development of a token-collateralized loan system that would allow farmers easy, fluid access to a new system of credit at competitive rates.