$40 M Series A funding received by Kenya’s MarketForce to scale its merchant super app
MarketForce, a B2B platform for retail distribution of consumer products and digital financial services based in Kenya, has raised $40 million in a Series A investment to expand its merchant super app, RejaReja, across Africa.
MarketForce is a B2B retail marketplace co-founded in 2018 by Tesh Mbaabu and Mesongo Sibuti that enables informal merchants in Africa to digitally source, order, and pay for inventory, access financing, collect digital payments, and make extra money by reselling digital financial services such as airtime, electricity tokens, and bill payments.
Its merchant super app RejaReja, which allows informal merchants next-day delivery for hundreds of SKUs from big FMCG brands, has over 100,000 users and is available in five African nations.
MarketForce, backed by YC, secured over US $2 million in pre-Series A fundraising last year and followed it up with a US $40 million Series A just seven months later. Ten13 VC, SOSV Select Fund, Vu Ventures, and Vastly Valuable Ventures all participated in the round, which was led by V8 Capital Partners, a London and Lagos-based African-focused investment firm.
Reflect Ventures, Greenhouse Capital, Century Oak Capital, and Remapped Ventures are among the current investors, while Ken Njoroge, co-founder and former CEO of Kenyan fintech business Cellulant, also participated in the round and will serve as chairman. The financing is a mix of loans and equity.
MarketForce intends to use this round of funding to scale merchant inventory financing via a BNPL offering, expand deeper into existing markets, and provide new digital financial and banking services through its broad merchant network. MarketForce already employs 400 people and plans to quadruple that number by the end of the year.
“Our goal is be the ultimate partner for informal merchants, empowering them to maximise their profits and grow in a digital age by getting better service, assortment, and access to new revenue opportunities, outfitting them with the technology and support they need to transform themselves from simple FMCG outlets to comprehensive financial service hubs for the continent’s last-mile communities,” said Mbaabu.
“We are targeting to serve over one million active merchants on our platform in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2025.”
MarketForce has proved its capacity to establish a distinctive, robust, and all-inclusive digital commerce platform for African businesses, according to Tobi Oke, the general partner at V8 Capital.
“We are proud to partner and build the future of retail in Africa by helping to optimise supply chains and catalyse the digitisation of the African retail ecosystem, which holds a lot of untapped potentials to improve incomes and enable millions of African merchants to grow their businesses,” he said.
