Tushop, a Kenyan social-commerce platform that enables communities in Nairobi to buy groceries more cheaply with free delivery, has secured $3 million in a pre-seed funding round to accelerate community group buying.
The seed funding round was led by 4DX Ventures and with participation from JAM Fund, Breyer Capital, Chandaria Capital, TO Ventures, Golden Palm Investments, FirstCheck Africa, and DFS Lab.
Founded in 2021, Tushop’s mission is to make access to groceries more affordable and more convenient for Kenyans and eventually all Africans.
According to Tushop, group-buying saves consumers up to 60 percent on groceries compared to buying in supermarkets, dukas, or at “mama mbogas.
In addition, it provides the added convenience of free delivery.
This means Tushop works with Community Leaders who collate orders from their neighbors and manage door-to-door deliveries.
Cathy Chepkemboi, Founder and Chief Executive at Tushop, said, “Tushop is unique in this market because we know the customer and we are our own customers! We have grown up experiencing the problem of unaffordable food on the one hand and the need to have additional ‘side hustles’ on the other because of persistently low incomes.”
The funds will be deployed to grow Tushop’s team, invest in tech to make its platform as easy to use as possible, and to further expand across Nairobi before rolling the service out to other cities in Kenya.
Wasoko (formerly Sokowatch) also joined to make their first strategic institutional investment into Tushop.
This has signaled confidence in the team’s ability to capture the community group-buying opportunity in Africa.
According to Tushop the oversubscribed round included additional participation from a number of angel investors including GB (CEO, Flutterwave), Raja Kaul (President, Sundial Group), Eli Pollak (CEO, Apollo Agriculture), and Ida Mannoh (Director of Growth, Chipper Cash).