Rwandan e-commerce startup Kasha raises $21million in a Series B round led by Knife Capital

Rwandan startup Kasha has raised $21 million in a Series B funding round led by Knife Capital. Kasha is a digital retail platform serving a wide range of customers with women’s health elements, with a mission to expand health access platform across Africa.

The seven-year-old startup, founded in 2016 by CEO Joanna Bichsel, empowers all women to confidentially and affordably purchase the products they need to live their best lives. Kasha allows customers to place orders for products via its website, a mobile app, an SMS shortcode, or a phone call, and it does not require a smartphone or internet connection.

Starting in Rwanda, Kasha raised $1.5 million in seed funding from angel and impact investors. In late 2020, after expansion into Kenya, Kasha secured a $3.6 million Series A from Finnfund, Swedfund, DFC, and Mastercard Corporate. Knife Capital led this recent Series B with participation from Finnfund, DFC, Tim Koogle (ex-Yahoo CEO), Beyond Capital Ventures, Altree Capital, Bamboo Capital’s BLOC Smart Africa Fund, and Five35 Ventures.

Speaking on the investment, Keet van Zyl, co-founder, and partner at Knife Capital, a $50 million Pan-African fund:

In the current economic climate, it is refreshing to come across such a high-growth capital-efficient business that is female-led and optimized to serve the large mass market segment in Africa, being especially strong at serving women customers. We look forward to being a partner in the Pan-African expansion journey with this purpose-driven dedicated team.

Since Kasha closed its Series A in late 2020, it has seen its annual recurring revenue grow by 50x, according to Bischel. She also mentioned that the company, widely misperceived as a social impact business in its early years, intends to “continue growing its revenue aggressively, become a global company, achieve a strong return for investors and ideally go public.”

While it may seem grand for a female-founded and female-led startup whose counterparts commanded less than 3% of Africa’s $6 billion venture capital market last year, Rwanda’s most venture-backed company has hitched its wagon to a star and it might be only a matter of time before ambition becomes a reality. Bischel says:

Having reached this major milestone of closing our Series  B, we are even more inspired and determined to achieve Kasha’s mission of being Africa’s leading digital platform for last-mile access to health. The exponential revenue growth we’ve experienced over the last several years was driven by the high market demand for quality, affordable health products and household goods from mass market customers in urban and rural areas of East Africa, and this has proven out our business model and our team’s ability to execute.

With Knife Capital leading our Series B, bringing their strong track record of portfolio companies that have scaled across the continent with successful exits to industry leading global corporations, provides us with the proven experience we need to achieve our ambitions as a company and to take it to the next level. We will be using the funds from Series B to expand across Africa and investing in strategic areas of the business to further continue our high growth trajectory. We are especially excited to have the continued support and reinvestment from existing Kasha investors such as FinnFund, DFC, Beyond Capital Ventures and others.