Kenya’s Twiga Foods Appoints New CEO Ahead Of Funding Round

Peter Njonjo, who was a Non-Executive Director at Twiga Foods, has been appointed as the company’s new CEO. He comes with 21 years at The Coca-Cola Company, having been leading the multinational’s West and Central African business unit as President. He takes over from his co-founder, Grant Brooke.

Grant Brooke will hold the position of Executive Director at Twiga and would be responsible for increasing the footprint of the startup in more countries across Sub-Saharan Africa. As per a conversation with WeeTracker, Grant confirmed that they would look into the East African market first as part of the expansion plan.

As Brooke revealed, running the company was taking much of his time, and he wanted to devote more energies to expanding into new markets. He also mentioned that there would be 40 to 50 new FMCG products introduced this year as part of their offerings portfolio. Twiga would also be introducing Farmer Finance project to support long term financing to the farmers.

Brooke added; “Starting new ventures is really my skill-set and passion, while proficiently running institutions is Peter’s skill-set and passion. Twiga has an aggressive growth plan and this transition leverages on our respective expertise.”

The B2B startup is on capacity-building mode and this year, it may witness more hirings at the senior level to lead each vertical. The startup is likely to raise another considerable round of funding in the coming few months and the leadership change will not affect anything. The money from the new round will be used for expansion into new markets, as per Brooke.

So far, Twiga has raised close to USD 24 Mn, last being USD 10 Mn in december 2018.

Launched in 2014, the aggregator claims to source fruits and vegetables from some 17,000 farmers across 20 counties in Kenya and delivers directly to 2,500 vendors in Nairobi and its environs daily.

Outgoing Twiga Foods CEO Grant Brooke said; “By aggregating thousands of retailers on a single platform, we’ve been able to increase efficiency in the food supply-chain, offer farmers a certain market, reduce waste and lower food prices for end-consumers – scoring a major victory for the food and nutrition sector in Kenya.”

On his appointment, Peter Njonjo said; “This appointment is a great honour for me and Kenyan corporate leadership expertise. I look forward to scaling up our vision of more efficient food markets in Africa and improved food security for our people. Twiga Foods is living proof of the latent opportunity to drive agricultural transformation and investment for local consumption.”