MarketForce a B2B commerce and fintech startup headquartered in Nairobi has raised $40M in a series A financing round.
The round was led by V8 Capital Partners, an African venture capital firm in Kenya with participation from Ten13 VC, SOSV Select Fund, Vu Ventures, Vastly Valuable Ventures, Uncovered Fund, along a number of existing investors; Reflect Ventures, Greenhouse Capital, Century Oak Capital and Remapped Ventures.
Founded in 2018 by Tesh Mbaabu and Mesongo Sibuti with an aim of digitizing informal transactions, its super app, RejaReja (a Swahali term for retailing) includes features that offer merchants a variety of payment solutions and helps to keep track of inventories.
While fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs) constitute a large amount of sales daily, it is nearly impossible to keep track of all purchases in the pay-on-delivery market in Africa.
MarketForce therefore, offers solutions to this by Its multi-purpose app RejaReja. The super app helps merchants make extra money by reselling airtime, electric tokens, bills payment and other financial services.
With its new funding round, the Y Combinator backed fintech is driving at going deeper in existing markets whilst doubling its current team of 400.
In a press release, Tesh Mbaabu, Cofounder and CEO of MarketForce said, “Our goal is be the ultimate partner for informal merchants, empowering them to maximize 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.
“We are targeting to serve over 1 million active merchants on our platform in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2025.”
Tobi Oke, General Partner at V8 Capital also said, “Marketforce demonstrates what we see as a triple threat with regards to returns. A strong executive team with an amazing track record, an expansive untapped market of informal retailers across the continent and a business model that scales extremely quickly.”
We are proud to partner with Tesh and Mesongo in accelerating the digitization of the African retail ecosystem which will help improve the lives of millions of informal african merchants.”
MarketForce partners with Nestle, Pepsi, Flour Mills of Nigeria, Bidco Africa, Chandaria Industries, Kapa Oil, Safaricom, Cellulant, Lami and Pezesha and other leading FMCG brands to provide next-day delivery for hundreds of SKUs to informal merchants.
It is currently operational in 5 markets (Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda).
With an average of 6,000 transactions daily, MoneyForce currently serves 100,000 merchants with a 27x revenue growth.
Just seven months ago, Marketforce concluded its pre-series A round with $2M. This funding round perches MarketForce at the top of the Series A funding in Central and East Africa.
