YC-backed Namibian startup JABU gets $3.2M for its B2B e-commerce and retail play –
Summary
As a last-mile distribution e-commerce company, JABU joins a list of startups across the continent that help small retailers order and stock their products and, at the same time, provide data-driven services to suppliers and manufacturers. Its platform connects over 6,000 retailers to local and multinational suppliers — such as Namibia Breweries Limited, ABInBev, Bokomo, Coca-Cola, Namibmills — and digitizes orders, payments and logistics. “Our volumes growth grew so much and we’ve picked up so much money in physical currency, the banks and others have sat down and said, ‘How can we fix this?’ I mean, we went from having a couple R100,000 (rands) a week to having millions of Namibian dollars. We realized that there’s a huge opportunity here to not only help them reopen but understand something very key here that they have no supply chain and also no way of sourcing their products at an affordable rate.” Informal retail is still king in Africa. The opportunity is so large that some startups, such as Nigerian B2B retail platform Sabi (a Rensource spinoff), said it was processing almost $12 million monthly GMV, TechCrunch learned in an interview with its founders in November.