Hi, my name is Fariel,
but back home,
I am also called the goat lady.
And today I will be sharing the story of how that came to be about.
In 2015,
I visited a small, remote village in Pakistan
called Pathan Goth.
The residents of Pathan Goth
were living without access to basic facilities
such as water and electricity.
The community was bussing water two hours from Karachi.
This made their water so expensive
that their livestock went without water every other day.
Bathing and laundry was a luxury.
The solution was simple:
a solar water pump.
But that would cost $10,000.
And for a community
where the average household earned
just about $70 a month,
this was beyond their affordability.
As I sat there thinking about this issue,
the solution literally walked in front of me.
A herd of more than 100 goats crossed my path.
And I thought to myself,
that is a lot of goats.
(Laughter)
I took a chance and asked the village elder:
Would they consider paying me for their pump in goats?
He agreed,
and that is how Pathan Goth got its pump
and I became the proud owner of 40 goats.
(Applause)
A few months down the line,
the Muslim festival of Eid came around.
During Eid, livestock is offered
to honor Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac.
And much like shopping before Christmas,
the demand for goats goes up,
and the price skyrockets.
I remembered my goats
and decided to put up a post on Facebook
asking my friends and family to buy their Eid goat from me that year.
Within a week I sold all my goats.
And even after paying for a team to do transport and manage them,
I more than recovered the cost of the pump.
This experience made me question the idea of money
and how it has changed and evolved for us.
I found that in 2500 BC,
Mesopotamia,
Sumerians used measured quantity of barley as money.
But as the trading circle grew beyond one village,
money's key characteristics changed and evolved.
Money not only needed to reliably store value
but also be easy to convert
and easy to transport.
That is when we --
civilization --
moved towards coin and paper money.
But coin and paper money get value
only when they’re validated by an external authority,
such as God, crown or the central bank.
Technology today enables us
to bypass the need for this central authority.
Today, the value of any asset can be transferred
from one person to another
using blockchain.
Any asset can now be tokenized,
digitized
and traded.
So technology is not only disrupting the need
for a financial intermediary
in mainstream economy
but also has the potential
to disrupt and democratize economic power
in more rural economies.
By removing the need for inefficient and expensive intermediaries,
small farmers can derive greater value
from what they grow and raise.
Livestock is very abundant in these communities.
Farmers literally use their goats and cows
as ATM machines
and as saving instruments.
They will sell an animal when they need cash,
such as to buy fodder for the rest of the herd,
to buy groceries for their home
or for weddings and health emergencies.
But these communities have never been able
to use their goats and cows
for larger, more productive assets ...
until now.
Our farmers are able to convert 15 goats into a solar water pump.
Previously,
these communities would rely on
or wait for an NGO,
a charity
or the government to take notice
and give them what they needed.
Now they are using their own resources
to fulfill their own needs when they need it.
This is self-reliance.
(Applause and cheers)
So how have we enabled the use of goats
as a reliable form of currency?
Right now, we we work with farmers through physical barter.
At the time of the solar installation,
we take possession of the goats.
We then sell these goats as meat to grocery chains
and through our own retail brand.
Every goat that we receive is then recorded,
as its unique ID --
its key characteristics such as its sex,
its age,
its weight
and even its number of teeth are taken into account.
And then using these,
we assign each goat a dollar or a rupee value,
essentially tokenizing a goat.
We have already worked with 45 communities,
enabling more than 6,000 farmers
to convert their goats into water and electricity.
(Applause)
We are now planning to add smartphones,
tractors
and other equipment.
My hope is that we can create a more inclusive economic system
where any person
or any community can use what they grow and raise as money.
Where a farmer, a small farmer
can use, wherever he is,
whether it’s Pakistan, Nepal, Somalia,
can use a digitized goat to pay for her kid’s school fees,
a tractor
or a smartphone.
This future isn't quite here yet,
but I hope using goats as money gets us closer.
Thank you.
(Applause and cheers)