Twiga Foods, a startup based in Kenya raised a $30m series B. Twiga works as a B2B marketplace for farmers and small vendors. It addresses two issues:
1- it reduces harvest losses by providing a market for vegetables and fruits
2- it fuels a supply chain that was missing enabling both parties to access to the market
While the startup originally provided only fresh produce, it has now a large offer of packaged goods. With this funding, Twiga is looking to expand in new cities in its home countries and then it will look at French West Africa. It will also build a distribution centre in Nairobi and deepen its offering to other players, such as agribusinesses (relieving them from the pain to develop their own procurement supply chain)
Why it matters:
First, Kenya, and notably Nairobi, is a hub for tech in Africa, and as such innovations, there have a tendency to spread over the continent. Then, Twiga’s supply chain offering is really interesting as the company started as a “simple” marketplace for fresh foods between farmers and vendors. It is now expanding to CPG while being present in other cities, it will act as a supply chain player for food manufacturers. The company would have then all the keys and connections to enter the B2C market with a large offering. If successful, Twiga would prove that supply chains, as unsexy as they could seem, can be disrupted by startups. This could be of some inspiration for many entrepreneurs.
