Kenyan mobile platform-based buying group Twiga raises $10.3m in Series A funding to finance scaling, portfolio diversification and new services.
Kenya’s Twiga Foods has raised $10.3m in Series A funding, which includes $6.3m in equity and $4m in debt instruments. Twiga Foods is a mobile business-to-business fruit and vegetable wholesale platform. It operates like a buying group by consolidating the purchasing power of small and fragmented urban retailers. The company claims to be the largest distributor of several basic food staples in Kenya. It has sold, for example, more than 55 million bananas. It currently fulfills around 4,000 orders a week.
The company also aims to improve the stability and reduce post-harvest losses of small scale farmers by giving them better access to a larger market with more stable prices. Twiga has also secured $2m in grant funding from USAID and the GSMA to support farmer services, financial inclusion and domestic food safety initiatives.
The investment comes at a time when both the Kenyan government and consumers are reconsidering their support for large scale formalized grocery retail. In the wake of financial problems at Uchumi and Nakumatt and a wider issue of supermarket chains not paying suppliers on time, Twiga offers a different approach. Crucially, it may help mitigate the dependency on the major supermarket chains that has proven problematic in Kenya.
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