Vendease raises $30M Series A
A food procurement platform for African restaurants, Vendease, has raised $30M Series A in Equity and Debt Funding.
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Nigeria-based food marketplace Vendease has raised $30M in a Series A round. The round was a mix of equity and debt financing and was co-led by TLcom and Partech. Other investors in the round included existing investors VentureSouq, Hustle Fund, Hack VC, GFR Fund, Kube VC, Magic Fund, and Kairos Angels.
Vendease was launched in January 2020 to solve the challenges and inefficiencies in Nigeria’s highly fragmented food sector using a marketplace model that connected suppliers and farms to restaurants and food businesses, with deliveries facilitated within 24 hours. However, over the next couple of months, Vendease switched from its middleman role to building on its relationship with food suppliers, buying discounted products in bulk, storing them, and making deliveries through third-party logistics partners.
The E-commerce industry in Africa is the second-most funded and transacted sector aggregating almost $200M in funding. The lion’s share of investment was brought in by Kenya’s Copia Global raising $50M Series C and Egypt’s Brimore with $25M Series A. With FinTech, E-commerce as the leading industries, the African region has been developing digital and tech disruptions to cater to the masses across all industries with Nigeria leading from the front.
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Vendease allows African restaurants and food business to buy supplies, access financial services, and power their business operations. According to the company, its platform, described as a series of stacks, is designed to mitigate losses and help food businesses thrive. CEO Tunde Kara told TechCrunch, “We’re building technology to efficiently move food from the point of production to the point of consumption. Everything we build at Vendease: financing, logistics, warehousing, inventory management, is tailored towards ensuring that food flows efficiently from that point of production to the point of consumption."
Vendease plans to use the investment to deepen operations, consolidate its presence in eight cities across Nigeria and Ghana (the company recently expanded to the latter), move into new markets, and build new products to increase customers’ efficiency. Andreata Muforo, a partner at TLcom Capital, and Cyril Collon, general partner at Partech Africa, said, they’re backing Vendease because they believe it can unlock significant value in Africa’s fragmented food supply chain and deliver robust solutions that impact critical issues around the food system on the continent.
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Source: techcrunch.com