MarketForce raises $40M Series A to digitise transactions for Africa’s informal merchants

Market Force, has announced the closing of a $40 million Series A round to scale up the super app, RejaReja which offers informal merchants next-day delivery for hundreds of stock-keeping units (SKUs) from fast-moving consumer goods FMCG brands

Ten13 VC, SOSV Select Fund, Vu Ventures, Vastly Valuable Ventures, Uncovered Fund, and a number of existing investors such as Reflect Ventures, Greenhouse Capital, Century Oak Capital, and Remapped Ventures all participated in the round, which was led by V8 Capital Partners, a London and Lagos-based African-focused investment vehicle.

Nigeria is one of 5 countries MarketForce runs an asset-light operating model with the merchant super app, RejaReja. Other countries are Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda.

With the goal of building the “Operating System” for retail distribution in Africa, MarketForce counts top consumer brands and financial service providers such as Nestle, Pepsi, Flour Mills of Nigeria, Bidco Africa, Chandaria Industries, Kapa Oil, Safaricom, Cellulant, Lami and Pezesha, to mention a few, as its partners.

Approximately 90 percent of household retail transactions in Sub-Saharan Africa occur in cash and are delivered through a network of about 100 million MSMEs. By 2025, retail payments on the continent are estimated to reach $2.1 trillion, and MarketForce hopes to digitize a significant chunk of these offline transactions.

The oversubscribed round is led by Ken Njoroge, Cofounder and former CEO of Cellulant as the chairman of the board who also participated in the round.

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“Our goal is to be the ultimate partner for informal merchants,” said Tesh Mbaabu, Cofounder and CEO of MarketForce “empowering them to maximize their profits and grow in a digital age by getting better service, assortment, and access to new revenue opportunities, outfitting them with the technology and support they need to transform themselves from simple FMCG outlets to comprehensive financial service hubs for the continent’s last-mile communities,”

By 2025, he said, they hope to have over 1 million active merchants on its network in Sub-Saharan Africa.

MarketForce had roughly 5,000 customers a year ago; currently, it has grown to 100,000 merchants, executing 6,000 daily transactions, with the average transaction size tripling and revenue increasing 27x.

“Marketforce demonstrates what we see as a triple threat in terms of returns,” said Tobi Oke, General Partner at V8 Capital and a member of the MarketForce board. A strong executive team with an amazing track record, a largely untapped market of informal retailers across the continent, and a business model that scales swiftly,” says Oke.

MarketForce is a business-to-business B2B Commerce and Fintech marketplace that enables informal merchants in Africa to order, pay, and receive inventory digitally and conveniently, access financing, collect digital payments and make extra money by reselling digital financial services such as airtime, electricity tokens, and bill payments. It was co-founded in 2018 by Tesh Mbaabu and Mesongo Sibuti.