Kenyan B2B Retail Marketplace, MarketForce Secures $2m in Pre-Series A Funding

MarketForce, a Kenyan B2B retail end-to-end marketplace, has raised $2 million pre-Series A funding round.

The new investment was raised from P1 Ventures, Y Combinator, Launch Africa, V8 Capital, Future Africa, GreenHouse Capital, Rebel Fund, and Remapped Ventures.

This brings the startup’s funding to a total of $2.5 million, including its $350,000 seed round in 2020 and $150,000 check from Y Combinator as part of the accelerator’s Summer 2020 batch.

In June 2021, Digiduka, a retail platform founded in Kenya, was acquired by MarketForce. Digiduka allows informal retailers to resell digital services like airtime, electricity tokens, and bill payments. MarketForce’s acquisition of Digiduka allowed it to fully integrate with RejaReja, which provides a mobile wallet for retailers to act as agents for payments and collection via a mobile app, WhatsApp bots, and USSD shortcodes.

Founded in 2018 by Tesh Mbaabu and Mesongo Sibuti, MarketForce enables the optimized distribution of FMCG goods and financial services through small retail shops and their distribution networks. Their other product, RejaReja, is a B2B e-commerce marketplace for merchants. It helps informal retail merchants buy and sell FMCGs and digital financial services.

RejaReja runs an asset-light model where it doesn’t own capital assets like delivery trucks and warehouses. These are provided by the company’s partners (manufacturers, distributors, and third-party logistics providers), who lease their assets to fulfil orders.

Kiosks using RejaReja have access to SKUs (Stock Keeping Units) through an app and can place orders on it. Based on specific ordering habits, MarketForce can then provide them with working capital loans.

According to the firm, they will use this round of funding to launch RejaReja in Nigeria and scale up the product across more towns in East Africa.

The startup has a presence in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Its clients include Pepsi, Safaricom, Fort Beverages, Lami and Platinum Credit, among others.