Two Kenyan CEOs, Tesh Mbaabu and Mesongo Sibuti raised Ksh4.5 billion (US$40 million) to scale their company Marketforce which was founded in Nairobi.
In a statement shared on Tuesday, February 22, Mbaabu announced that the funds were raised in their Series A funding exercise to scale their operations.
He further noted that the company, which is an end-to-end distribution platform, was looking to introduce credit services.
"Today marks the beginning of a new chapter at Marketforce. We just closed a Ksh4.5 billion ($40 million) Series A funding round led by V8 Capital Ventures and are one step closer to achieving our goal of being the largest B2B commerce & fintech marketplace in Africa.
"We are extremely humbled by the support that we’ve received throughout our journey and very grateful to our community of customers, partners and investors, for believing in our team and mission," stated Mbaabu.
According to TechCrunch, the money was raised from several companies including V8 Capital Partners, Ten13 VC, SOSV Select Fund, Vu Ventures, Vastly Valuable Ventures and Uncovered Fund among others.
“Our mission is to enable SMEs to grow, and what we’ve realized 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,” added Mbaabu.
Throughout his career, Mbaabu considers himself a serial entrepreneur and has founded various tech-based companies including Mesozi Group, an information technology holding company as well as Cloud9xp.com, which helps travellers to easily discover and book the best leisure experiences.
He graduated from the University of Nairobi in 2015 with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and has since worked in over five companies.
He is also a fellow at Harambean 2020, Westerwelle Young Founder 2019, Alibaba and the United Nations.
Sibuti, on the other hand, serves as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Marketforce, a company he helped found and specialises in the design, development, and scaling of technology-enabled platforms.
He also graduated from the University of Nairobi in 2015 with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science.
