An e-commerce platform serving unbanked customers in rural Kenya has raised $26 million
Summary
The promise of e-commerce over the past decade across Africa’s urban middle class lies in the ease and convenience of making and paying for purchases via an internet-connected mobile phone without human interaction. “We built our business on a mobile platform to bring retail services to low to middle income African consumers—consumers who are remote, unbanked, unconnected and who may not a valid ID or address,” says Tim Steel, CEO of Copia. Copia’s model is hinged on a 5,000-strong agent network comprising mainly of local, small shopkeepers who earn commissions by serving as “points of aggregation of orders and delivery distribution.” Essentially, rather than make purchases online via a website or consumer-facing mobile app, Copia customers walk into stores of partnered agents who place orders on their behalf, take payments and serve as delivery points. Users can also make orders through USSD codes—the 20-year old mobile technology that’s become widely adopted on the continent as a workaround to boost financial inclusion via simple feature phones. Copia’s raise comes amid increasing questions over the viability of large e-commerce operations across Africa as well as the size of the actual addressable middle class market with a flurry of high-profile shutdowns and a major seemingly distressed sale.