WASOKO

Daniel Yu, an American entrepreneur who had lived in Africa, saw what every foreign observer noticed but few built for: Africa had millions of small retailers (dukas in East Africa, kiosks in West Africa, spaza shops in South Africa) that were completely disconnected from formal supply chains. A small shop in Nairobi was buying Unilever products from a distributor who bought from a sub-distributor who bought from another distributor — three or four margin layers between factory and shelf.

Wasoko (originally called Sokowatch) went direct: manufacturers list products, retailers order on a mobile app, Wasoko delivers same-day. It was effectively the Alibaba B2B model applied to informal African retail.

Wasoko operates a B2B marketplace connecting FMCG manufacturers to informal retailers (dukas — small neighborhood shops) in Africa. It earns revenue from the margin on goods sold (it buys from manufacturers at wholesale and sells to retailers at a markup) and from financial services (embedded credit for retailers who need to buy inventory on account).

The last-mile logistics is owned by Wasoko — it operates its own fleet of delivery vehicles.

Wasoko marketplace app (FMCG ordering for small retailers), WasokoCredit (buy-now-pay-later for inventory), same-day delivery network

Wasoko expanded from Kenya to Tanzania, Rwanda, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Zambia, and Egypt — covering both East and West Africa. It launched WasokoCredit (BNPL for retailer inventory purchases) which drove order frequency significantly.

Tiger Global's investment at a $625M valuation in 2022 was the largest Series B in African startup history at the time. Wasoko merged with MaxAB (the Egyptian equivalent) in 2023 to create a pan-African B2B commerce platform.

The informal retail market in Africa is highly fragmented — hundreds of thousands of small shops, each ordering small quantities, spread across cities without formal addresses. Building a last-mile network to serve this market requires significant fixed infrastructure (warehouses, delivery vehicles, route density) before the economics work.

Wasoko also competes with TradeDepot, Omnibiz, and other African B2B commerce platforms that are building the same infrastructure.

Tiger Global, Avenir Growth, Goodwater Capital, Quona Capital, JAM Fund