By Mohammed Umair, Chief Sales Officer, T57

In a typical B2B SaaS funnel, only a small fraction of top‑of‑funnel leads ever reach this level of commitment. Benchmarks for B2B SaaS lead‑to‑customer conversion rates of around 1–5%, even for well‑run teams. By contrast, T57’s Gulfood MoUs represent buyers who have already crossed several internal gates: they have acknowledged a problem, aligned multiple stakeholders, and authorized their leadership teams to formalize intent before product launch. That is no longer “awareness”; it is pre‑qualified demand. The world is telling us to hurry up and launch.

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By Umme Habeeba Khanum, CMO, T57

Most B2B stories begin with a niche. Ours begins with a policy. DAM, approved with an outlay of ₹2,817 crore, is building digital public infrastructure for agriculture: AgriStack for farmer identities, a Digital Crop Survey covering all districts by 2025–26, and decision-support systems that can ingest everything from soil data to scheme payments. The mission’s north star is clear—every rupee of public investment should be traceable to a farmer, a plot, and a crop.

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By Afzal Hussain Mohammed Nakheeb, Founder, Chairman & Head of Strategy, T57

Trade shows will not disappear; they will be redefined. They will become places to deepen relationships, signal strategic intent, and convene stakeholders. They will not be the primary engine for stitching together trust, finance, and execution.

That engine will be digital, data-rich, and AI-native. T57 is being built as that engine: a trusted corridor where verified buyers and suppliers can discover each other, understand real demand, access embedded finance, and move from conversation to contract without the multi-month tax.
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By Afzal Hussain Mohammed Nakheeb, Founder, Chairman & Head of Strategy, T57

MSCs are designed as Centers of Agricultural Excellence—modular, LEGO-like physical hubs, each embedded every few hundred thousand hectares apart, that integrate our digital tools into a walk-in, trusted, human space. An MSC is not a shop, nor a government office, nor a startup incubator. It is all of these at once and more. It is a physical platform: a curated marketplace of agri-tech startups, drone services, AI-driven advisory, post-harvest solutions, and policy expertise, orchestrated to serve the farmer first. Here, farmers do not just consume data; they co-create strategy. They walk in with five acres and an idea, and walk out with a plan, a forecast, a risk outlook, access to tools, and a realistic route to market.

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By Afzal Hussain Mohammed Nakheeb, Founder, Chairman & Head of Strategy, T57

Ninety days is not a long time in geopolitics, but it is enough to change how a region views food. The Iran–Israel–US conflict has revealed how much the Gulf's food security depends on a few shipping lanes, some ports, and a small group of insurers. Public commentary now concedes that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) faces its biggest food challenge since 2008, with over 70% of supplies still passing through the Strait of Hormuz, even though traffic has dropped sharply and war-risk premiums have increased (more details here). One overlooked point is that the next 60 to 70 days could also be the start of a five-year shift if the region treats every emergency fix as a model for a new way of operating.

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By Afzal Hussain Mohammed Nakheeb, Founder, Chairman & Head of Strategy, T57

On a mid-March morning this year in Dubai, despite an escalating conflict in West Asia between Israel, the US, and Iran, supermarket shelves still looked reassuringly full. But, behind the scenes, the machinery that keeps those shelves stocked had been hit by its most severe shock since 2008, and this time the stress was concentrated on a single geographic fault line: the Strait of Hormuz. Emergency logistics subsidies, daily stock monitoring, and tightening price controls in countries like the UAE were helping maintain calm in supermarkets. The reason for the situation: more than 70% of the Gulf Cooperation Council's (GCC) food moves through this one chokepoint, the Strait of Hormuz, and shipping traffic through the strait had reportedly fallen by 95 percent since the Israel–US-Iran conflict escalated, instantly turning the war into an alarming and immediate food security and inflation risk for every GCC nation.

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By Dr. Moaz Abdullah Mohammed Mojaddidi, Geo Head, KSA, T57

With T57, farmers can list their harvests, set terms, and specify availability. While still harvesting, they begin receiving direct offers—often from buyers in major cities and across borders—driven by transparent market data.

The transformation is profound. Suddenly, the price discovery process is democratized. Real-time bids from Riyadh, Jeddah, Kuwait, and even the UAE present real price improvement possibilities. The platform ensures that, after a transaction, farmers receive prompt digital payments, thereby ending the age-old waiting game.
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By Afzal Hussain Mohammed Nakheeb, Founder, Chairman & Head of Strategy, T57

A smaller, cleaner membership means disputes drop dramatically, and credibility increases significantly. Globally, open B2B marketplaces experience significant volumes of failed transactions or unresolved conflicts, resulting in billions of dollars in lost time and revenue. By contrast, a curated club model brings order and transparency. Members at T57 can view one another’s trade history, see ratings similar to those on Booking.com and Uber, and trust the blockchain-backed record of every visit, document, audit, and trade. On T57, we promise real deals, real people, real outcomes.

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By Abdul Bari Kareem, Co-founder and CTO, T57

India's avocado story represents one of agriculture's most dramatic transformations. As Rahul Mathur, a pre-seed investor, recently highlighted on X, imports have surged 50-fold over the past five years, reaching approximately 12,000 tons in FY25—a trend that continued into 2025, with imports hitting 7,600 MT between January and May alone. Yet beneath this growth lies a constellation of challenges that T57 is uniquely positioned to solve through its comprehensive farm-to-table ecosystem.

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By Afzal Hussain Mohammed Nakheeb, Founder, Chairman & Head of Strategy, T57

Türkiye's agricultural sector enters 2026 on the brink of a far-reaching reset, shaped by food security imperatives, evolving agricultural trade patterns, and the urgent need for supply chain modernization. As the country navigates grain import dependency, volatile commodity pricing, and fragmented food logistics infrastructure, T57 emerges as a unique platform delivering integrated solutions for these challenges: real-time market intelligence through its global food price intelligence to stabilize agri-commodity trading decisions, and smart shipping capabilities that provide end-to-end trade assurance across Türkiye's complex agricultural supply chain.

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By Abdul Bari Kareem, Co-founder and CTO, T57

Traditional food supply chains operate like a game of telephone played across continents. A mango travels through 7-12 intermediaries from an Indian orchard to a London supermarket, each adding markup while documentation grows increasingly detached from reality. Distributors typically add 10-30% markups to cover storage and transportation costs, while retailers add another 20-50% before products reach shelves. Temperature logs get falsified. Origin certificates are duplicated. Quality certifications become meaningless stamps on aging paper.

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By Afzal Hussain Mohammed Nakheeb, Founder, Chairman & Head of Strategy, T57

Malaysia's agricultural sector enters 2026 under the combined pressures of food security ambitions, climate risk, and tightening sustainability standards in global agricultural trade. These challenges—ranging from rice self-sufficiency gaps and climate-induced yield volatility to EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) compliance requirements and digital transformation imperatives—demand integrated, technology-enabled solutions that no single traditional platform can adequately address.T57 is uniquely positioned to meet this moment, offering the only comprehensive suite of tools perfectly aligned with Malaysia's emerging 2026 agricultural landscape.
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By Afzal Hussain Mohammed Nakheeb, Founder, Chairman & Head of Strategy, T57

The Middle East agricultural sector stands at the edge of a structural transformation in 2026, driven by the imperative to reduce chronic food import dependency, the acceleration of climate-smart technology adoption, and fundamental shifts in agricultural trade and supply chain traceability. The region needs to work on this transformation because, as the World Economic Forum reported in early 2025 ...

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By Abdul Bari Kareem, Co-founder and CTO, T57

Agriculture is no longer “catching up” with technology; it is quietly becoming an AI-native, automation-first industry where software, sensing, and robotics define competitiveness as much as soil and seeds do. The result is not just smarter farms, but a re-architected food system where data flows are advancing the industry toward autonomy.

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By Afzal Mohammed Nakheeb, Founder, Chairman & Head of Strategy, T57

When the February 2026 India-US Interim Trade Agreement was signed, New Delhi sold the reciprocal 18% tariff rate as a calibrated opening; Washington branded it a “historic trade deal.” The tariff saga did not end there. On February 20, 2026, a US Supreme Court’s decision struck down President Trump’s sweeping emergency-tariff architecture. But this has not ended tariff pressure for India - it has simply shifted the battlefield from headline tariff announcements to narrower, more legally durable instruments and bilateral arrangements.

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By Afzal Hussain Mohammed Nakheeb, Founder, Chairman & Head of Strategy, T57

For too many farmers across the global South, harvesting a good crop does not translate into getting paid on time—or sometimes getting paid at all. Payment delays, opaque deductions, and disputes over quality routinely erode already thin margins. Farmers, as a community, lack bargaining power. And that makes me ask a question with an uncomfortable answer: “Are today’s agri payment systems fit for purpose?”

The answer is, “No.”

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By Abdul Bari Kareem, Co-founder and CTO, T57

On January 26, 2026, I sat in the audience at Gulfood listening to our Founder, Chairman, and Head of Strategy, Afzal Hussain Mohammed Nakheeb, speak on the panel “Break-Through Technologies and AI-Powered Automations: Strategic Value Creators for an Intelligent Food System.” He was joined by Shail Khiyara, CEO of Swarm, Marc Oshima, CEO of Oshima Good Food, and Dr. Grace S. Thomson, Director of the AI Policy Clinics at the Center for AI & Digital Policy (CAIDP). Hearing them on that stage in Dubai, with the global food industry all around us, crystallized for me what we at T57 must focus our energies on.

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By Afzal Hussain Mohammed Nakheeb, Founder, Chairman & Head of Strategy, T57

“Don't attempt to scale AI; attempt to scale your decision first and pick that high-stakes decision. AI gives you a gift and a choice. The gift is that of time, and the choice is: what are we going to do with it?” I felt that Shail Khiyara’s words captured the tone for our Gulfood 2026 panel discussion on “Break-Through Technologies and AI-Powered Automations: Strategic Value Creators for an Intelligent Food System.” His words stayed with me long after he spoke

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By Afzal Hussain Mohammed Nakheeb, Founder, Chairman & Head of Strategy, T57

As 2026 dawns, the Indian agricultural sector stands at a critical inflection point where policy ambition converges with the hard realities of climate risk and global market volatility. For industry experts and policymakers worldwide, India is no longer just a participant in the global food system but a primary driver of its demand dynamics and digital transformation. We believe five pivotal developments will redefine the landscape for agricultural trade, agri-commodity trading, and food security in the coming year.
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By Afzal Hussain Mohammed Nakheeb, Founder, Chairman & Head of Strategy, T57

Agriculture has always been close to my heart, and it is also the heartbeat of any thriving economy's identity. When I look at agri-dependent regions, I do not see statistics or supply chains first; I see farmers, family businesses, and entire communities whose livelihoods rise and fall with the harvest. That is why the recent signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between T57 and MAIB (part of the International Assembly of Islamic Business) is significant to me: it is a commitment to putting farmers and agri-entrepreneurs at the center of a new, technology-enabled growth story.

Why does agriculture matter so much?
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By Afzal Hussain Mohammed Nakheeb, Founder, Chairman & Head of Strategy, T57

In agricultural markets, trust isn't just a nicety. It is currency. Yet outdated payment systems routinely trap millions of farmers in cycles of financial uncertainty. When substantial transactions vanish into bureaucratic black holes for weeks, the real cost isn't measured in delayed interest—it's calculated in the broken livelihoods of farming communities.

Even sophisticated financial corridors struggle with these inefficiencies. A recent inter-company transfer between my Dubai and Saudi operations took three weeks to clear—a stark reminder that if large businesses face such delays, imagine the devastation for cash-strapped farmers operating on razor-thin margins.

What is the impact of delayed payments on farmers?
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By Afzal Hussain Mohammed Nakheeb, Founder, Chairman & Head of Strategy, T57

Across global trade, a $2.5 trillion financing gap locks out countless businesses from participating in commerce. The agriculture sector is among the hardest hit. Farmers, cooperatives, processors, and agri-SMEs struggle to secure the working capital they need to buy inputs, pay labor, move goods, and fulfil export contracts, even as the world produces enough food to feed everyone. The result is a paradox: food is grown, but often never reaches the people who need it most.​

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By Afzal Hussain Mohammed Nakheeb, Founder, Chairman & Head of Strategy, T57

In the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and beyond, as many as 40% of farmers continue to use hand tools and face immense challenges against middlemen networks that have dominated trade for over a hundred years¹. The outcome is grim: farmers in countries such as India, Egypt, and Nigeria earn barely enough to subsist. Equally disturbing is that end consumers are left paying exorbitant prices. The system’s design leads to untold stress in the farming community, often resulting in farmer suicides and perpetuating poverty^{2 3}. This crisis is so pervasive that words fail to convey its depth. For a majority of the estimated 624 million farmers worldwide^4, the unyielding uncertainty inflicted by the traditional agricultural and trade system turns life's simplest hopes—to provide, to endure, to dream—into distant possibilities. To me and a handful of close associates, this didn’t look like mere poverty; it was a painful and relentless erosion of dignity and possibility. The world cannot look away from such heartbreak. We could not, especially in an age when technology can create solutions to this unforgiving system.

Is technology the real answer?

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