Kenyan furniture startup, MoKo Home + Living raises $6.5m for expansion

Moko Home + Living, a Kenyan furniture startup, has raised $6.5 million for expansion in the Kenyan market. This Series B debt-equity funding round was co-led by by U.S.-based investment fund Talanton and Swiss investor AlphaMundi Group.

Other participants include Novastar ventures, Blink CV, Kenya’s Victoria Commercial Bank which offered $2 million debt financing.

Apart from funding its expansion in the Kenyan market, Moko intends to use the funds to build more partnerships with retailers and outlets to increase offline sales. It also plans to purchase more equipment.

Founded in 2014 by Eric Kouskalis, MoKo’s managing director and Fiorenzo Conte, Moko Home + Living started out as Watervale Investment Limited, an entity that sought to fix raw material supply issues for furniture manufacturers. It however pivoted in 2017 and piloted its first consumer product (a mattress) launched the MoKo Home + Living brand to serve the mass market a year later.

The startup claims it has grown five-fold over the last three years, and its products are currently in more than 370,000 homes in Kenya. MoKo mattress is the one of its popular products in the Kenyan market and it intends to scale up its production capacity and grow its product line over the next few years.

According to Kouskalis in an interview with Techcrunch, “We plan to have an offering for each major piece of furniture in a typical home — bed frame, TV stand, coffee table, carpet. We are also developing even more affordable products in existing product categories — sofas and mattresses.”

Talking about the transaction, Miriam Atuya of the AlphaMundi Group said “We were impressed by MoKo’s climate-friendly local production capabilities. The company is a leading innovator in the industry because they’ve turned sustainability into a remarkable commercial advantage. Every step they’ve taken on this front not only protects the environment, it also improves the durability or affordability of MoKo’s offering to its customers.”

MoKo targets to enter three new markets by 2025