Kenyan startup, MarketForce 360 receives $350k seed round from VBAN.

Kenyan retail-tech startup, MarketForce 360 has received US$350,000 in seed funding from Viktoria Business Angels Network (VBAN) and other investors.

MarketForce 360, a field sales and distribution automation software that allows consumer brands to improve how they deliver essential goods and services to retailers and consumers by bridging the information gap in last-mile distribution.

MarketForce uses mobile devices to enable field agents to record all customer interactions as they happen live in the field, and then collects this data and presents it through live web dashboards.

According to the startup, the investment will help it to accelerate Its road-map and place products in the hands of thousands of more daily active users, at the same time expanding the team’s capacity across East Africa.

Co-founder and CEO of MarketForce 360, Tesha Mbaabu in a statement said, “2020 has been an incredibly important year for us. After two bootstrapped years of R&D, building the product, and testing across various industries, we are ready to take in external capital. Initial customers love our product, so we are ready to aggressively grow our customer base as we make an impact in the expansive African retail and distribution economy. We are focused on supporting our clients to sell more during this difficult time and plan to raise additional capital within the year to support our growth efforts.”

Speaking on the investment, Manager at VBAN, Jason Musyoka said, “We believe that the highly fragmented African retail and distribution value chain is primed for disruption. The analytics from such platforms will be instrumental in distribution optimization hence bringing goods to as close as possible to the highly-expectant, globally- aware African consumer market. The team at Mesozi has proven to be capable of delivering the product and eager to exploit the opportunities the sector presents.”

The seed round was not only from Viktoria Business Angels Network(VBAN) but from Growing Africa Capital and other global VCs.

Director at Growing Africa Capital, Thuku wa Thuku said, “We’re passionate about investing in businesses that have entrepreneurs with a track record, as well as, scalable solutions that solve real problems. We’re excited to join Mesozi on this journey of automation.”

MarketForce360 is a subsidiary of Mesozi Group which was launched in 2018. It was established by Co-founders, Tesha Mbaabu and Mesongo Sibuti.