Namibian business-to-business e-commerce startup Jab Confirmed that it has raised $ 3.2 million in funding rounds on TechCrunch.
The seed round, which closed last year, welcomed investors such as Afore Capital, Y Combinator, FJ Labs, Quiet Capital, Kli Capital, Pareto Capital, and the Anonymous Angel.
As the last one-mile distribution e-commerce company, JABU has joined the list of start-ups across the continent, providing data-driven services to suppliers and manufacturers while small retailers order products to secure inventory. ..
CEO David Akinin JABU was established in mid-2020 to correct Namibia’s inefficient and almost non-existent supply chain and distribution.
The platform connects more than 6,000 retailers to local and multinational suppliers such as Namibian Brewery, ABInBev, Bokomo, Coca-Cola and Namibills to digitize orders, payments and logistics.
Namibian startup has a vehicle fleet along with eight distribution centres. Suppliers using the platform have dashboards to see where their products are delivered, to see key performance indicators, and to book merchandising. You can also run advertising and marketing campaigns in the shop, give away products, and tap. For merchandising profits.
JABU has been operating in stealth mode for most of last year. Entered Y Combinator during the accelerator Summer batch 2021 is the first Namibian startup.
Startup does not show us Curation list Up to 15 African startups have postponed Demo Day to this winter’s batch Have got Selected by According to Y Combinator, some sources.
Last year, venture capital and institutional investors scrambled to help retail startups in newly established existing business-to-business e-commerce. Nigeria’s B2Be Commerce Platform, one of the earliest in the universe TradeDepotRaised a total of $ 110 million in debt and capital..Startups from other parts of Africa that have raised investment include those from Morocco Bicycle, Egyptian Capita When MaxAB, And of Kenya Twiga When MarketForce.
JABU sheds light on the Southern African region. The company operates in three cities in Namibia and has recently expanded to two cities in Zambia…The monthly GMV grew 25 times, and the average growth rate of the delivered SKUs was Almost 53% since March. According to the company, revenue has increased 35-fold over the same period.
Like most African countries, Namibia Terrible Depends on cash. And JABU, which makes a profit by owning the supply chain, strives to digitize the physical cash collection process through the wallet…
When the money from the retailer arrives at the JABU distribution centre, Normal It takes 48 hours to settle in the bank.. Instead of going through this mundane process, JABU’s wallet allows merchants to deposit and withdraw money immediately in sync with these centres.
“Our trading volume growth has been so great that we’ve got so much money in real currency. Banks and others sat down and said:?? In other words, it went from millions of rand to millions of dollars in Namibian dollars a week. And I realized that there was something bigger and better than the one we first used.
In the next phase of JABU’s wallet system, according to Akinin, in addition to digitized cash, merchants will offer other services to consumers.
“The only way to do that is to partner with a merchant and they [know your customer] The process ensures that the merchant has the right space and the right account To Return their floats. And they deal with customers. So we enter the B2B2C space through the merchants we work with, “he said.
JABU’s revenue comes primarily from distributions that JABU performs on its own or through third-party fleets… Merchandising and targeted marketing and advertising also bring money to the company. In the future, fees will be charged from transactions made in the merchant’s wallet..
David Akinin (JABU Co-Founder and CEO)
Akinin, who served as a sales and commodity analyst at Google, spent part of his professional career as an investment banker at Credit Suisse… He later visited top African cities such as Johannesburg, Lagos and Addis Ababa many times, but found an opportunity to try something new in Windhoek.
At that time, Namibia had huge housing demand. Akinin launched a digital mortgage startup but moved to a construction company based in Namibia, Zambia and Cameroon.
Due to the pandemic, Akinin’s construction company has launched a COVID relief program to donate groceries in Namibia… Then he came across the country’s B2Be commerce retail opportunity.
“We entered the informal sector and noticed that the city closed all informal retailers… And when they did that, we had this software we developed so that we liked to digitize housing demand, “he said, explaining how JABU started. Did.
“We hired 40 people from the community and registered 1,000 stores in about a week or two. Affected This shutdown. I realized that there is a great opportunity here to understand the very importance of not only helping them reopen but also having no supply chain and no way to procure products at affordable prices. “
Informal retail is still the king of Africa. A Study by PwC Informal channels such as kiosks, moms and pop-up stores reported 90% of sales in major African economies… The opportunity is so great that some startups, such as Nigeria’s B2B retail platform Sabi (a spin-off of Rensource), have Processed about $ 12 million of GMV each month, TechCrunch learned in an interview with the founder in November.
JABU, which has more than 200 employees, is preparing to raise Series A funding this quarter, Akinin told TechCrunch. Startups use seed rounds, Subsequent Growth rounds Expand to Botswana and South Africa to grow technology and operations teams and train field agents.
YC-backed Namibian startup JABU gets $3.2M for its B2B e-commerce and retail play – TechCrunch Source link YC-backed Namibian startup JABU gets $3.2M for its B2B e-commerce and retail play – TechCrunch
