AgriCore and Blade Labs launch the world's first Takaful-backed, Sharia-compliant digital livestock investment portfolio

AgriCore, the Singapore-incorporated agritech operator behind the InsureCow livestock intelligence platform, and Blade Labs, the Qatar-based AI-native governance platform for Islamic finance, today announced the launch of the world's first Takaful-backed, Sharia-compliant digital livestock investment portfolio. The programme is operational in Bangladesh with capital deployed and cattle enrolled.

Standard Chartered estimates the global Islamic finance opportunity at USD 5.5 trillion, projected to reach USD 7.5 trillion by 2028. ISF Advisors puts the annual global smallholder finance gap at more than USD 200 billion, with around 70 percent of smallholder credit demand unmet. The infrastructure to connect those two pools at the farm level has not existed before.

The programme combines AgriCore's ground operations (biometric animal identification, IoT health monitoring, a managed veterinary network, and farm management tools for smallholder farmers) with ZeroH, the Blade Labs governance platform that records every operational event on the blockchain and routes it through a continuous Shariah Supervisory Board review.

For the first time, a remote investor can fund a cattle investment on the other side of the world and see, in real time, how every unit of capital is being used. Every enrolment, every vaccination, every feed delivery, every sale, and every return distribution is recorded on the blockchain and cross-signed by the people closest to the transaction. Takaful coverage is active from the day an animal is onboarded, and Shariah compliance is reviewed at every lifecycle stage rather than once at contract inception.

An independent review of existing Takaful-backed livestock products, blockchain-based livestock platforms, and Shariah-compliant agricultural investment instruments confirms that no other deployment combines all five elements: Takaful-backed livestock risk, Sharia-compliant investor structure, blockchain-anchored operational events, continuous Shariah Supervisory Board oversight, and a live deployment.

Bangladesh has more than 57 million bovines and ruminants, with 20 percent of the population making a living from livestock. Roughly 93 percent of the country's meat moves through informal, largely unregulated channels. The Bangladesh Food Safety Authority reported that 33 percent of tested food samples in fiscal year 2024 to 2025 were flagged for contamination, adulteration, or serious quality defects. In March and April 2026, police in Narayanganj and Dinajpur districts uncovered and prosecuted criminal networks slaughtering horses at night and selling the meat as beef. This is the supply chain institutional capital is being asked to trust. The AgriCore and Blade Labs programme gives investors, regulators, and consumers a verified alternative.

"For a long time Sharia compliance in agricultural finance has been claimed more often than it has been demonstrated," said Sami Mian, Chief Executive Officer of Blade Labs. "On this programme it is demonstrated at every stage, on the blockchain. That is what regulated capital has been waiting for."

"We have spent years building the ground operations in Bangladesh," said Tasvir Ahmad Faheem, Chief Executive Officer of AgriCore. "What was missing was a governance layer that gave remote investors confidence in where their capital was going. We have that now, and we have it live."

A research paper on the governance framework for Takaful-backed livestock investment is being co-authored with academic partners and will be published on SSRN. Progress updates from the Bangladesh deployment will be shared publicly as the investment lifecycle continues.