Sokowatch, the African e-commerce
company leveraging innovative technology to transform the informal retail
supply chain, has today announced the close of a $125 million Series B equity
round, the largest venture financing round ever raised for a non-fintech
startup in Africa.
Led by Tiger
Global, the world’s largest venture capital firm, and Avenir
Growth Capital, the round includes participation from a host of leading
names including VNV
Global, Binny Bansal (Co-Founder of Flipkart)
and Sujeet Kumar (Co-Founder of Udaan),
as well as existing investors Quona
Capital, 4DX
Ventures and JAM
Fund.
Alongside the new funding, Sokowatch has also officially launched in
Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire and Dakar, Senegal, the company’s first locations in
West Africa, as it continues to revolutionize access to consumer goods across
Africa’s $600 billion informal retail sector. With its rapidly growing
Pan-African operations, the company has rebranded to Wasoko, which translates
to “People of the Market” in Swahili. The new brand reinforces the company’s
shift from its origins as a backend distribution software platform in East
Africa to a public brand providing free delivery of essential goods and working
capital financing to informal retailers across opposite ends of the African
continent.
Since its launch in 2016, Wasoko has delivered 2.5 million orders to over
50,000 informal retailers across Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, Côte
d’Ivoire, and Senegal with revenue growth over the past 12 months at over 500%.
With no single country accounting for a majority of its revenue, Wasoko has
built a truly Pan-African business with more than 800 full time employees
across the African continent, all of whom are also shareholders in the company
through Wasoko’s universal employee equity policy.
The new capital will enable Wasoko to drive further geographic expansion
and product growth across the continent. The company is exploring expansion
into Nigeria and Southern Africa, while continuing to consolidate its
market-leading position across its six current countries. Wasoko is also
examining opportunities to expand its product offering to verticals such as
merchant point-of-sales systems, bill payments, and social commerce through
both internal innovation as well as strategic investments and acquisitions of
relevant companies.
CEO and Founder of Wasoko, Daniel Yu said, “After more than six years
building and constantly iterating on our operations, we are proud to have
demonstrated the traction and quality of business required to raise funding
from world-class investors. We’re fully focused on leveraging their strategic
support to build one of the biggest e-commerce companies in the world and
transform access to goods and services for African citizens across every corner
of the continent.”
In his remark the Founding Partner at Avenir Growth Capital, Andrew Sugrue stated that “Informal
retailers capture the vast majority of consumer spend in Africa, and they are
dramatically underserved by existing distribution and financial infrastructure.
We’re excited about the category-defining, Pan-African commerce platform Wasoko
is building and the efficiencies it brings to these retailers and their suppliers
through a combination of superior product selection, logistics, and financial
services.”
Wasoko’s Series B round is the largest non-fintech venture raise in
African history. In addition to the historic raise and rebrand, Wasoko has
appointed Sujeet Kumar, Co-Founder of Udaan – the world’s largest B2B retail
e-commerce company – to its Board of Directors to provide strategic guidance
for Wasoko’s continued growth.
Over $600 billion of consumer goods are sold in Africa through informal
retail channels every year, supplying the vast majority of the population.
Despite the importance of the informal retail sector, the industry still
remains highly fragmented and inefficient with local shops facing a number of
major challenges including frequent stockouts, limited access to capital, and
difficulty receiving goods from suppliers. Through Wasoko’s platform, informal
retailers are able to order products at any time via SMS or mobile app for free
same-day delivery to their stores. Leveraging historic purchasing data, the
platform also evaluates retailers to provide them with access to Buy Now Pay
Later financing.
As Wasoko continues to strengthen its presence across Africa, the company
has made several transformative appointments to its senior leadership team
including Mellany Msengezi (ex Airtel) as Head of Marketing; Aurelien Barreau
(ex Carrefour) as Head of Sourcing; and Georges Bejjani (ex Jumia) as Head of
Business Intelligence. Wasoko is currently recruiting for a number of roles
including Chief
Operations Officer and Chief Product
Officer as well as Engineers and
Product Managers at all levels and a host of other positions
throughout the business.
