MarketForce, the Kenyan startup has raised $40 million in series A funding for its merchant inventory financing and growing the company across the company.
Last year MarketForce expanded its operations in Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda. The company also introduced options for buy now and pay later (BNPL) that help merchants in fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs). The company, MarketForce was founded by Tesh Mbaabu and Mesongo Sibuti.
“Our mission is to enable SMEs to grow, and what we’ve realised over time is that offering them loans is great, but that we need to empower them to access goods. And that’s why we’ve introduced this merchant inventory financing, which is like an overdraft facility, where they’re able to order goods and pay later after selling them. We started a pilot and it is going well,” said MarketForce CEO and co-founder Mbaabu.
“We’re very deliberate about extending working capital and that’s why we raised some debt and also because we are looking at that fintech angle as our big frontier for the next phase of our business,” said Mbaabu.
“We grew to tier two cities in markets that we are in. This has also opened up distribution opportunities for brands that were not previously able to access these markets,” adds Mbaabu.
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