Coffee with Andreas - Connecting Coffee, Technology, and People with Sherif Badwy

Oh, hi. Welcome to my kitchen. This is Coffee with Andreas. A new podcast we're trying for you to look behind the scenes of Dmitra and our work that we do around the world. And I thought it might be nice to have a cup of coffee with you together and my interviewees that come along today. I'm so proud to have a cup of Capellian coffee, one of our customers in Kenya, a cooperative union that is producing amazing coffee and they're actually roasting and grinding already made coffee or consumption in Kenya and beyond. And while I'm brewing this, I want to give you some quick updates from Dmitra. Our founder and CEO, John Trask, has been in the UN Council for digitization of agricultural supply chains for a few years now. And FAO, so the UN have created projects together that streamline the efforts around the globe and we are part of that expert premium. So from John visiting the UN in Rome to our ESG director, Carlotto Costa to visit them is quite exciting for us as Dmitra because the recognition we get as experts matches the reach that an organization like UN has. And quite honestly, there is no other service provider at the moment that has implemented technology at the scale. We are implementing it in Kenya, in Indonesia, in Ghana, in Uganda, and around the globe in different nations. So that in and of itself is quite exciting. And another big milestone for us in Africa is our partnership with Naku, the National Association of Coffee Cooperative Unions in Kenya. And Capellian, whose coffee we're drinking today, is just one of those unions, but a very prominent one because the director of Capellian is also CEO of Naku. And Naku has invited us to visit them for a signing which I was part of and quite excited about. And we are now the national system of choice by Naku and their constituents around Kenya to digitize the Kenya coffee chain. That makes me extremely proud because we have young local leaders like Kavania Karun, our director of Kenya who is doing such a great job inspiring local communities to take matters into their own hands. Today's episode is going to be exciting for me because we're going to meet a person that I've been working with for the last two and a half years, somebody that is by my side every single step of the way and by the side of our team around the globe every single step of the way. Our one and only Sharif Bedwi, our sales enablement director, who is here now to have a coffee with me in my kitchen. Hello Sharif. Hey, Andreas, thank you for having me. That was very kind of you. And I'm looking forward to that coffee. I'm hearing good things about it. Well, the coffee is already poured. We have a wonderful coffee that was sent to me by Dr. Bed himself, the CEO of Cape Caleon Cooperative Union in Kenya. And it is a cup that is very hard rivaled by other coffee that I've had. I don't know how to describe it, but it kicks like a meal. Lots of strong flavors, lots of caffeine. I love it, especially as a first cup in the morning. So now that we want to meet Sharif, what I would like to know from you, Sharif, when it comes to coffee, what is a story that you know, you can tell from your life that is special in terms of coffee experience. Can you, can you share something there? Yeah, yeah, actually, you know, when you say that, I remember my introduction into coffee. So my father is a huge coffee drinker. He's a big fan of Turkish coffee, which for those who don't know, it's a way of brewing coffee. It's very strong. So he's coffee addict. He means a cup of coffee to sleep. So growing up, I was always wondering, what's so like, what's so amazing about this, this brown brew? And I never liked the taste, but I thought, you know what, my dad's a smart guy. He's on to something. So when I, when I started my first job, I started thinking, okay, you know what, let's drink some coffee. I'm sure it does something to you. And I just hated the taste. So I ended up drinking my cup of coffee with five to six spoons of sugar and a Turkish cup of coffee is this small. So it started tasting all right. Two weeks later, I'm speaking to a client and he's looking at me, he's, are you okay? Yeah, what's wrong? Apparently, because of all the caffeine and sugar, my eyes were twitching and they were, they were going all over the place. And that's when I, that's that's when I, that was the moment I started to look for the right way to make coffee or my way to make coffee. And it took me about a couple months to learn that I like the French press, right? But so that was really my introduction into coffee. When I was 17, some, some twitching in front of clients led me to finding my, my favorite brew. That's a great story. I'm sure some of us have tried the sugary kind. I myself don't like sugar in my drinks, but very, very interesting. So how do you like your coffee today? Are you still drinking lots of sugar in it or? Absolutely not. My, my flat black nothing goes in there. I like the, to, to taste all the notes that I can. And actually, in that, in that adventure, because I used to hear before like, oh, can you in coffee, go out of a mall and coffee, I was always thinking, well, sure, coffee is just coffee, but after that, I started to realize that the differences in flavors and notes, some being fruity or the others, but definitely black, no sugar. Art to swallow sometimes, but it gets you off in the morning. Yes, it does. Yes, it does. And from coffee and having a cup with you, I, I actually want to know a little bit more about yourself and how you ended up at Dimitra. What drew you towards? Yeah. What is Dimitra today? And tell us how you connected to John and the team. I love that. I love that memory, actually. It's, I want to say it's, it's a mix of a little bit of luck and opportunity season. Back in 2021, I was in between companies and I was doing some freelancing. And Dimitra was, was early on and they were, we were looking or they at the time were looking for someone to help them on, on a couple of projects. And I found the opportunity to me at the time. It was just like any other freelancing gig until, started to learn a little bit more about the company beyond that one project. The more team members I spoke to so that I could work on this project, but more I started to be attracted to wait. Hold on. These guys are all thinking about the same thing, not just about making the right technology, but everyone's asking the question, how does this help the farmer? How is this giving the farmer value first? And it just like, it amazed me because it was the first time I was listening to people talk about more than profit or the better system in the market. Or it was actually about real value being delivered. At the time, I knew nothing about agriculture, except that I eat food. But within that project, I started to learn a bit more and more about agriculture, how tech can help in agriculture, what Dimitra is actually doing with the farmers. And then one day, I spoke to John and listened to his vision and thought, that's a vision I can get behind. It's a pretty articulate, well put vision. And from there, that's when I started to think to myself, okay, I want to be a part of what this company is doing. Let's see if we could take on a couple more freelancing gigs until eventually, John offered me to come on board, gave me the opportunity to come on board. And the rest is history. 70 countries later, where we're all over the world, team members speaking 19 different languages. I mean, I couldn't be more blessed. Thank you for that. What I would like to ask is when did it actually register how it's affecting farmers? What was your first experience with farmers in a training setting where you worked with local people and their community? What made it even more clear that vision to empower farmers? Can you share an experience? I definitely can. It was actually very, very early on in our coffee journey. When we still had the basics of the application and we started going out to speak to coffee farmers and cooperatives and exporters. And it was specifically a conversation we had in Ethiopia with someone who is now actually working with us for the last two years to onboard almost 2 million farmers in Ethiopia. As I was presenting the application, and this was very early, my mindset was still, you know, coming from purely software sales. My mindset was still in, hey, look at this great application. But it was that conversation with him that had me shift my mentality when he was like relief. This is, he stopped me halfway through. He said, this isn't incredible. Not because you guys have all these features, but do you know how disconnected us Ethiopian farmers are from the rest of the supply chain? We make the coffee, but we don't have a say or in much influence in the rest of it. It's because nobody knows what we're doing. Nobody knows the name of the farmer, how we can, how we are improving the quality of what we have. And it was that conversation where it clicked with me, it was like, hold on. And this isn't just like nice to have data. This is all these, these actions really reflect back into the livelihood of people who are making my favorite cups of coffee. So that was the moment where it clicked. And I think it also clicked with our Ethiopian partner at the time because he's been with us now for the last two years. And two million other farmers are seeing the same, the same value. So that moment still continues to inspire me actually two, three years later. Well, thank you for sharing that because inspiration is what is needed to get two million farmers or five million farmers around the globe. 10, 20, 50 million inspired to start taking this journey. So you shared with us that the simplicity of traceability and the awareness to use that data is also changing perspectives of the farmer. But how did it change your perspective as to what we're doing at Dimitra, as to how we can actually empower farmers? How did that experience change your perspective? Right, right. So I want to say even that same experience also made me realize, okay, yeah, I mean, people grow coffee here, people grow coffee there, but you're not going to help or enable these farmers if you try to tell them what to do or what the best way to do it is listening is the most important thing. And that's something we've been taking from day one. Whenever we start talking in a new country or to new cooperatives and we all they'll let this one could, but we never claim that, hey, where are the experts who are going to show you how to do it? We have the vision and we have the know how or we have an idea of how to get there. But we work with our partners, I like to call them partners, not clients, our partners to figure out the best way to get there. What works best for their cultural context? How is it best to transfer knowledge within the communities? It's not the same in Uganda as it is in Ethiopia. So really, really listening and becoming a part of the community in a way really makes a difference in how we build things. That's a very human aspect that you describe and how can you change or implement that into software. That's that was my question early on. Yes, we can listen. Yes, we can follow the different flows and processes that each origin has in different ways. But how do we reflect that in in an app? How do you listen in an app? I mean, you can't take the human aspect out of this business, I think, Andreas. We have the app, but the way to or we continue to build on to the app and someone who's in the app at least 15, 20 times a day, I want to say that I still get pleasantly surprised sometimes when I find, oh, on this new feature is here today that wasn't here yesterday. And I know that was because of a conversation we had in this country and in that country. And that's that's the human element about everywhere we go there. There is a human element. We work with the we work with knowledgeable people who are embedded in the community. People who've done the cocoa farming, people who have done the coffee exporting. We look to work with them. Now, this is an interesting one. Thank you for opening that line of conversation because there are technology experts and we have many of them with data scientists, we have programmers, we have developers, we have designers, but the listening part comes from us truly wanting to understand the coffee industry and the coffee processes in each nation. And for that, we have our coffee expert, Jan Michael Vernecke in our team who is actually guiding us every day through these processes. And now the listening part makes sense to me as well, what you mean by that sheriff. We listen, we we transfer what we hear from the market, from the users. And take it back to our developers to implement new, well, new mirrors of a new process or a new functionality around coffee quality and traceability. Love that, love that. Yeah, that's that's exactly it's it's all about listening, being part of the community. Doing things in their context. At the end of the day, the community is the part that needs to be empowered by our tools. Can you can you describe a moment of empowerment that you've realized, for example, maybe working with our director of Kenya, Kevin in in Kenya to onboard Kip Kellion again, which whose coffee we're we're consuming today. Can you share some experiences of light bulb moments, I want to say, of the digital pioneers that we trained there? Absolutely. And I'm always going back like Kevin and the team took so many amazing pictures that day. I always like to go back and look at those pictures because at the time, I was I was virtually in the room. And there were I believe 10 10 young professionals who were coming to learn how to use an application to collect data. That was the mindset, right? So you imagine, you know, oh, a group of people waking up early in the morning, you know, they're they're going to take a lesson at their job so that they can go out and do more work. That's how I envisioned them coming into the room. But when they came into the room, what I saw was 10 young eager professionals who were were so fired up to learn how to use this technology, which they are seeing as revolutionary to work in their communities. And these guys, they registered, I don't have the number off the top my head, but they were like within eight days, I think they registered hundreds of farms. It was the fastest data collection that I've seen before. And that shifted that made me realize, wait a second, you know, people aren't viewing this as, oh, more work we have to do. These these 10 professionals took personal accountability in helping their community of farmers continue to to export. They they took it so seriously. We're contacting me almost in the middle of the night. And I was happy to to respond back because it was they're not there just doing another job. They're they are there to revolutionize. And it really showed in how they they asked the questions showed up in the room. That was a very inspiring moment. Thank you for for sharing that and and revolutionizing the supply chain. That sounds like a big change. And us in the so-called developed world who have been grown up with different tools in in the digital realm. We just don't understand sometimes how these basic functionalities around traceability, farm registration, quality management, and then the deeper tools into farm management, how they can really be perceived by digital novices, right, by communities that are just getting started on their digital journey. So thank you for sharing that that it it is perceived as something revolutionary. And your title of director of enablement I take out the sales because you, Sharif, are the one enabling many people around the globe to become digital champions for their own communities to take that pride and become a leader into the digital revolution of their coffee trade and coffee production. And that is by far the most amazing experience that I can have second hand now listening to your story. So thank you for that. Is there any other human story that comes to mind when thinking about your work over the last two years that stuck out? I mean everything is human based, right? Like everything I have that opportunity really to you know being in enablement where most of my work is about the human aspect. So there's actually so many human moments. One short one I will mention as well as coming out of Ethiopia a few months ago or early on this year we were doing this really big data collection effort. And I'm in different WhatsApp and telegram groups with some of the people on the ground on Ethiopia. And these guys were you know first time using an app to collect data first time seeing their own farms on satellite images. But they got it so fast they were they got it so quickly because they really wanted to and they were out collecting data from day two. And I'm expecting like you know normally any new rollout you have a lot of questions. So I'm expecting in our group to get some questions. I did not get a single question I only got from many different people Sharif Demitra thank you guys for making this this is changing how we work. Sharif Demitra thank you guys you guys really don't understand the effect that this is having and going to have on our on our communities. Especially when we started talking about carbon credits. And it just it just blew me away you know it completely it's always because we know that we know that what we're making is is is going to help the farmers and help the communities and the supporters. Well it already is Sharif it's not just going to help it is helping millions of farmers already and thank you for your work on that. We're going to switch over to a different segment now we have some questions from the audience here. So why don't we dive into that and please audience we are open to your questions ask us anything. One specific question that came up is how does Demitra technology actually help farmers in real time? Oh it's so many different ways how to start with answering that one. Well first I want to mention that or I would say step one it makes them a big part of the supply chain. Now the farmer has a digital identity like the rest of the players they're part of the supply chain they immediately get tools in their hands and that help them communicate their value to the rest of the supply chain that helps them improve what they're producing by sharing the data of what they're what they're practicing. And since UDR is such a big topic it immediately just through that instant that registration immediately helps them continue their business or access their business in the EU which is one of the biggest coffee markets in the world. That's true and and it simplifies what is such a big regulatory challenge right it simplifies in just one single app that you can register all these data points for UDR compliance for example within 90 seconds if you're trained on it that makes it the peace of mind that I saw in the faces of the farmers in Kenya for example that said oh we didn't even understand what was asked of us and now we realize it's this simple thank you so much. So the simplicity is helping every single day taking the complex and making it into a an intuitive process in our app. I think that's one of the major advantages here. So there's a second question here that I would love for you to answer for our audience. What's the biggest challenge Sharif when explaining blockchain to non-technical audiences? I'm going to take that as a trick question because why explain blockchain to a non-technical audience? We don't need to. How do you explain it as an expert? How do you explain it to an audience that has only heard about blockchain in the crypto world for example? Yeah yeah yeah I love that so I like to we should like to try to keep things very very simple right so when explaining that when when bringing up blockchain when talking about we don't need to talk about all of the revolutionary ways blockchain can help but I like to focus on one specific point which which is very important to to the trade is trust right so the way I like to explain blockchain is it's a way to verify and ensure trust of your activity to ensure that the next person is going to trust your your activities it's going it's a it's a it's a way to share the data in a way that is not going to be tampered with and the next person can verify it and trust it. Thank you that that is a great explanation and and actually that is the way we use blockchain today there will be many more aspects in our functionality in our ecosystem that will use blockchain technology to well to create trustless environments where human trust is no longer required but we can program trust into the chain so that will be a hot topic over the coming episodes and and thank you for getting us started on that Sharif and one question that came in from our team chat is which Dimitra project are you most proud of being part of? Can't say all of them. No. The one that you are most proud of. The one that I'm most proud of. I would I would like to say it's although it's a long project and there's so much work to do here still I want to say it's the the project in Ethiopia because of at least personally how many communities I interacted with and heard from them their excitement on what they're about to embark on when we went into Ethiopia it wasn't you know one and this is what we're doing in Kenya as well but but for me Ethiopia I was I was very hands on with the people hearing their their feedback their excitement how this person wants to you know we started with four people being trained and this person wanted to bring in their cousin and that person said he wants to bring in his friend and this one knows a guy so that was that was very very inspiring for me and so that one I want to say most most proud of partly because the complexity partly because of how you know we're able to go around these hurdles but also big parties because that personal connection that I felt directly with the the farmers and people working there that that speaks to you and your approach with with our technology inspiring people on the ground to take responsibility into their own hands and become digital champions and that is where I want to share one of the proudest projects that I can mention is or the project that I'm most proud of currently is definitely our work with the government of Indonesia where we not only digitize the coffee and cocoa supply chain but we've also been tasked to look at other commodities and digitize them through our system most prominently out of Indonesia is rubber palm oil and soy so that makes me extremely proud that we have gained the trust of a very very dedicated government that said we need to take matters into our own hands and we choose Dimitra as a tool that yes it's a lot of work and yes we have a long way to go to to build this for the government but we're already seeing amazing feedback on that EUDR readiness and that is at the end of the day what what gets us up in the morning and gets us to to work this hard so Sharif I don't want to keep you from working because I see you're in a suit I know we just exited a meeting together we had with the government of Uganda today the government of Uganda has been working on digitization for the last two years especially in the coffee chain and we've been part of that communication and part of the team working on this and getting this done now to close this as a last zip reflection we only have one more question left for you Sharif and that is if you could describe Dimitra's mission in one word what would it be and why one word one word trust it's trust we're creating trust between the farmers and their buyers between the buyers and the governments and most importantly we can't do what we do unless there's trust within the team there's trust between the teams and the people that we work with yes we have amazing technology it's fantastic I could talk about it for days and you know that very well yes yes you can trust is always our goal so that's that's where the mission resonates well thank you for that word I would have wished you used a different word but I'm going to use it because it's in your title already I would use enablement as the mission of Dimitra because we are providing the infrastructure and the functionality around the people that need it the most right now those that need more transparency into the chain and that enablement is what we do that enablement is what you do every day not only with our sales partners but with each and every one of our digital champions in the client communities so I want to thank you for all the hard work you're doing for the inspirational trainings you give for the demos that you do so well for for our team and the external teams really really inspirational talk today thank you for sharing some of your coffee history and the Dimitra history I wish you best of luck for for the rest of the day and the week ahead and I hope to see you sometimes soon to talk about some other aspects of your work I'd absolutely love to be on thank you for having me Andreas I also want to say thank you to our entire team it's it's never never all the work that we do it's always a team effort everyone and Dimitra has such everyone really shares that mission and the vision that that that we just talked about everyone really does so big thank you to our team and to the community as well when we are in the room with the Ugandan government the Indonesian government whatever government or country around the world you guys are in the room with us too you guys yes and and thank you you're already teasing the next episodes because that's the team we're going to meet in the coming weeks and I'm looking forward to having another zip-up coffee with each and every single one of you and maybe even with some of you listeners out there happy coffee drinking from Berlin and I hope to see you very soon cheers see you soon guys