Vendease an online marketplace for Africa’s food businesses has recently raised $30 million in an equity and debt funding round.
This seed round of $30 million was split between $20 million equity and $10 million debt, which was co-led by TLcom and Partech, in a rare joint investment by two of the biggest Africa-focused funds.
The equity round also included Hack VC, Kube VC, VentureSouq, Hustle fund, GFR Fund, Magic Fund, and Kairos Angels, who re-invested after participating in the previous round. The $10 million debt round was raised from the local finance market.
According to Vendease, the new seed round raised will be used to deepen its operations across eight cities in Nigeria and Ghana, while noting that the startup is currently building a technology to aid in the effective movement of food from the point of production to the point of consumption
CEO of Vendease Tunde Kara while commenting on the recent funds raised said, “We’re building technology to efficiently move food from the point of production to the point of consumption.
“Everything we build at Vendease; financing, logistics, warehousing, inventory management, is tailored towards ensuring that food flows efficiently from that point of production to the point of consumption.”
Vendease enables African restaurants and food businesses to buy products, access financial services, and secure their operations.
According to the company, most customers, including restaurants and food businesses, hospitals, hotels, and schools, incur losses of $100 billion annually due to several factors.
These factors range from unreliable supplies and waste to limited data to make informed purchasing decisions to little or no capital to fund purchases.
Vendease, described as a series of stacks, is designed to reduce waste and help food businesses thrive.
The platform claims to have transported about 400,000 metric tons of food for its more than 2,000 customers in the past 12 months and helped them save about $2 million in procurement and more than 10,000 man-hours.
Vendease CEO Kara also disclosed that his company has saved its customers nearly $500,000 in losses due to overstocking.