Nigerian e-Commerce Startup Rabawa Secures $163,000 Funding from Aptive Capital
Africa’s first video commerce platform, Rabawa, has announced that it has raised $163,000 in a round led by Aptive Capital, a USA VC firm that is focused on supporting early-stage startups.
Rabawa is a startup that gives buyers and sellers access to a virtual shop and thousands of products from trusted suppliers via their mobile devices. RABAWA’s social and video commerce solution offers resellers the platform to leverage social media for curating, promoting, and selling products to end-users. Without shops and inventory costs, entrepreneurs can leverage the Rabawa’s to advertise and showcase their products to other users.
Rabawa uses social and video commerce and a streamlined logistics chain to provide the lowest prices to online shoppers on the continent. The platform connects resellers and business owners to top manufacturers and wholesalers across Africa, Asia, the USA, and the UK.
Since the launch of its service in April 2021, Rabawa has caught the attention of the e-retail space in Africa. Rabawa currently has over 5,000 resellers and 1,000 suppliers are currently registered on the platform. Commenting on the fund, Olayinka Akinkunmi the COO of Rabawa said, “The pace at which Rabawa has grown within one month in Nigeria, we will be able to deploy social and video commerce to other African markets”. She further noted that in line with the United Nations Millennium Development Goal, Rabawa hopes to empower at least 1 million unemployed or underemployed Africans by the year 2023 with their own businesses.
The Managing partner of Aptive Capital, Paul Brandon Gilpin, speaking on the investment said “At Aptive, we are out to identify talents and business models that work and then we invest. We are very impressed with Rabawa’s deep knowledge of the market and their planned approach to solve the challenges of unemployment, poor product availability, high cost of logistics, access to market issues, and poverty across Africa”.
With the latest funding round, Rabawa intends to build on its current status, become a key player in Africa’s e-commerce space by utilizing social and video commerce to build a sustainable business model that impacts Africa socially and economically.