This archive report was first published on 9 July 2021.
Published on July 9, 2021, Kenya's MarketForce, a B2B retail end-to-end distribution platform, has secured $2 million in its pre-Series A funding round.
The funding, which brings the startup's total funding to $2.5 million, includes its $350,000 seed round in 2020 and $150,000 check from Y Combinator as part of the accelerator's Summer 2020 batch.
Investors who took part in the funding include P1 Ventures, Y Combinator, Launch Africa, V8 Capital, Future Africa, GreenHouse Capital, Rebel Fund, and Remapped Ventures.
MarketForce's innovative play 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, helping informal retail merchants buy and sell FMCGs and digital financial services.
RejaReja operates an asset-light model, where it doesn't own capital assets like delivery trucks and warehouses, which are provided by the company's partners (manufacturers, distributors, and third-party logistics providers).
With RejaReja, kiosks have access to SKUs through an app and can place orders on it. Based on specific ordering habits, MarketForce can then provide them with working capital loans.
The startup plans to use this round of funding to launch RejaReja in Nigeria and scale up the product across more towns in East Africa.
MarketForce has a presence in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, with clients including Pepsi, Safaricom, Fort Beverages, Lami, and Platinum Credit, among others.
