Africa’s first social and video commerce platform, Rabawa, has raised $163,000 from Aptive Capital, a VC firm in the USA that is focused on supporting early-stage startups.
RABAWA’s social and video commerce solution offer resellers the opportunity to leverage social media for curating, promoting, and selling products from Manufacturers / Distributors to end-users.
The platform gives resellers access to a virtual shop and thousands of products from trusted suppliers.
Through the use of social and video commerce, heavily discounted prices, and a streamlined logistics chain, Rabawa provides the lowest prices to online shoppers in the continent.
It gives African housewives, students, youths & aspiring entrepreneurs the opportunity to quickly and easily launch their online businesses with ZERO capital investment or inventory.
The platform connects resellers and business owners to top manufacturers and wholesalers across Africa, Asia, USA and UK.
Since the official rollout of the Pilot model on 1st April 2021, Rabawa has caught the attention of key players in the local e-retail industry and continues to attract the best of talents to take its business model forward.
Over 5,000 resellers and 1,000 suppliers are currently registered on the platform.
According to the Chief Operating Officer of Rabawa, Olayinka Akinkunmi, the company’s pace is too promising to be unnoticed.
In her words “the pace at which Rabawa has grown within one month in Nigeria, we will be able to deploy social and video commerce to other African markets”.
She further noted that in line with the United Nations Millennium Development Goal, Rabawa hopes to empower at least 1 million unemployed or underemployed Africans by the year 2023 with their own businesses.
The Managing partner of Aptive Capital, Paul Brandon Gilpin, spoke excitedly about the recently secured investment: “At Aptive, we are out to identify talents and business models that work and then we invest. We are very impressed with Rabawa’s deep knowledge of the market and their planned approach to solve the challenges of unemployment, poor product availability, high cost of logistics, access to market issues, and poverty across Africa.
Since the fund commenced, Aptive Capital has invested in about 8 Startups with Rabawa being the 7th and biggest ticket size ($163,000) disbursed so far” he stated.
Aptive Capital’s portfolio investments include startups like One Kiosk, Skyfire Digital, MimiMoney, Emmnoch Farms, Statesman, and Slabdeck who have received between $10,000 and $50,000 from the funds.
Although unconfirmed, several business moves now hint at Aptive Capital’s interest in participating in a currently undisclosed round of One Kiosk.
With its new funding round of $163,000, Rabawa has officially positioned itself to be become a key player in Africa’s e-commerce space by utilizing social and video commerce to build a sustainable business model that impacts Africa socially and economically.
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