AGRITA: From the Field to the Buyer

On the evening of October 18, 2026, AGRITA stood on the final stage of HUIT Startup, a city-level startup competition in Ho Chi Minh City. We came home with two awards in the Business Track: the Consolation Prize and the Most Favorite Project Award. This post is about what AGRITA is, why it matters, and the road to that night.

The problem

A Vietnamese agricultural cooperative (HTX) brings together many farming households. Today, much of its work lives in notebooks, spreadsheets and phone calls: which plot grows what, which step of the farming process is due, what went wrong this season, how much was harvested and where it went.

That has two costs. Inside the cooperative, managers cannot see the whole farm at a glance, and problems are found late. Outside it, buyers have no way to check where a product came from, so a careful cooperative looks the same as anyone else on the shelf.

What AGRITA is

AGRITA is a platform that a cooperative uses to run its farms, keep its stock, sell online and prove where every product came from, all in one place. Each cooperative works in its own space on a shared platform, and every person sees only what their role allows.

It brings together five connected parts:

• Farm: growing areas, plots drawn on a map, seasons, farming procedures, daily tasks, a farming diary and incident reports.
• Warehouse: what came in from each harvest, what is in stock, and what went out.
• Traceability: a QR code for each harvest lot, and a public page that tells its story.
• Marketplace: a shared online market where many cooperatives open their own storefronts.
• Administration: members, roles and settings for each cooperative.

How it works: the life of one harvest

The easiest way to understand AGRITA is to follow a single harvest.

1. Map the land. The cooperative draws each plot's boundary on a map. Plots are grouped into growing areas, and the area adds itself up from its plots.
2. Plan the season. A technician starts a season on a plot or a whole area and applies a standard farming procedure (SOP) from the cooperative's library.
3. Do the work. The procedure turns into tasks for the farming households. Farmers mark tasks done and keep a farming diary. If they see pests, disease or bad weather, they report it, and the technician decides whether it is a real incident.
4. Harvest. When the season ends, the yield of each plot is recorded as a harvest lot.
5. Store. The warehouse receives the harvest, records the amount that actually arrived, and keeps a link back to the lot it came from.
6. Trace. Each harvest lot gets a QR code. The code stays the same as the goods move through the warehouse and onto the market, so the story never breaks.
7. Sell. A seller from the cooperative lists the product on the marketplace, links it to the stock it comes from, sets the price and publishes it.
8. Buy and scan. Anyone can browse every cooperative's products without an account. A buyer signs in to order, and can scan the QR to see the plot, the season, the farming diary and the certifications behind the product.

The data a farmer enters in the field is the same data a buyer sees at the end. Nothing is typed twice.

Who benefits

• Cooperative managers see every plot, season and incident in one view instead of chasing paper.
• Technicians reuse proven farming procedures and catch problems early from farmers' reports.
• Farming households know what to do and when, and their careful work is finally on record.
• Sellers reach buyers directly through a storefront, without building their own online shop.
• Buyers can check where their food came from before they pay for it.

For the cooperative, traceability stops being paperwork and becomes a reason to choose its products.

My role

At TA Consultant, I am in charge of developing AGRITA and of developing its requirements: I work with the business analysts to turn how a cooperative really operates into clear rules and flows, then design the UI/UX and build the platform from them.

In practice that means shaping a long requirements document, raising the questions and edge cases it has not answered yet, and turning it into screens that farmers, technicians, managers, sellers and buyers can each use without training: deciding what each role sees first, how a plot is drawn on the map, how a farmer reports a problem in a few taps, how a seller links a product to its stock, and how a buyer goes from a QR scan to the full story of a harvest. It also means designing the states people meet when things are not normal: an empty list, a slow connection, an error, or a screen they do not have access to.

The road to HUIT Startup 2026

HUIT Startup is organized by Ho Chi Minh City University of Industry and Trade (HUIT). Its seventh edition, launched on May 15, 2026, was the first at city level, with the theme of sustainable development through innovation.

• Entries: 244 projects and more than 1,000 contestants, from over 70 schools and universities and 20 businesses, across three tracks: high school, university and business.
• Qualifying and semi-final rounds: the field was cut to 37 finalists. AGRITA was one of only 8 projects in the Business Track.
• Preparing for the final: finalists went through six startup training programs, from basics to advanced topics, had one-on-one sessions with mentors, and joined the HUIT Startup Tour 2026.
• The final, October 18: each team pitched to the judges. Around the stage, every finalist had a booth at the exhibition, and a Demo Day connected teams with investors, funds and companies.

At the end of the night, AGRITA received a Consolation Prize in the Business Track and the Most Favorite Project Award. The first comes from the judges. The second is voted by the audience, which is why it means the most to us: it says the problem we are solving made sense to people who had never heard of AGRITA before that day.

The final was covered by Diễn đàn Doanh nghiệp, Công Thương and Giáo dục Thời đại.

What comes next

AGRITA is still being built. The first version focuses on the core path from field to buyer; online payment, delivery partners and processed products are planned for later stages.

If you work with cooperatives, or want to talk about designing products for people who are not used to software, say hello.