Kenya’s E-commerce Startup Copia Ropes In USD 2 Mn Equity Financing From Goodwell Investments
Kenya-based ecommerce startup Copia has raised USD 2 Mn in equity financing from Dutch impact investor Goodwell Investments to expand in Kenya and other emerging rural markets across Africa and beyond.
We are excited about our new investment in Copia! This ecommerce business provides huge benefit to people living in underserved rural communities. Ideal fit for our uMunthu fund. https://t.co/Df18JHYWz5 #impinv #fintech #dfs pic.twitter.com/35zusO95T2
— Goodwell Investments (@GoodwellInvest) January 21, 2019
Copia is an e-commerce startup which was is led by Time Steel. The business supplies products and services to “Base of Pyramid” (BoP) consumers. By means of an amalgam of tech, local agents, effective delivery strategies, broad affordable product offering and services, the enterprise is able to enable household access goods that would otherwise prove very difficult to obtain without having to travel to another major city. The online allows pre-paid orders that take two to three days to be fulfilled, on the average, that is.
Copia was launched in 2013 – supposedly believed to have been founded in Silicon Valley by Americans Tracey Turner and Jonathan Lewis – and since then it has been supplying products and services to underserved consumers residing in rural Kenya, as well as other interest consumers. Having started with just 20 agents, the startup now works with over 300 of them, boasts of no less than 40,000 customers and processes more than 80,000 orders in a month.
How Far So Far?
February 2018, the store set up its new distribution hub in Nairobi which will help the company facilitate thousands of deliveries in a day. The new center was established at warehousing facilities from Africa Logistics Properties.
In the words of Toim Steel, Copia prides itself in the provision of a unique direct to end consumer e commerce-enabled shopping service, bringing choice, convenience and opportunity to rural and peri-urban customers across the Kenyan landscape.
The hub which was launched around five years after Copia’s debut, was a fulfillment center that was relocated to an ideal location at ALP North Logistics Park. The company signed a long-term lease for nearly 4,500 sqm to benefit from the highest pallet densities in the market and get the lowest pallet storage costs per square meter. The hub enabled Copia run thousands of deliveries a day from the central distribution center to its agent network across the regions.
