Twiga Foods, an m-commerce startup supporting Kenyan farmers, has announced a $10 million investment. The Series B round was co-led by the IFC, a member of the World Bank Group and TLcom partners.
But, it also saw the participation of existing investors. This includes; Wamda Capital, DOB Equity, 1776 and Adolph H.Lundin.
As part of the deal, Wale Ayeni, who leads IFCs’ venture capital activities in Africa, and Maurizio Caio, Managing Partner at TLcom will join the board.
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Twiga will use the new investment to expand operations and offer new services. Since it launched operations in 2014, Twiga has grown to work with over 13,000 farmers and 6,000 vendors in Kenya.
The company which started off matching vendors to banana farmers now works with other produce. Among the produce includes tomatoes, cabbage, mango, potato and onion. The company says that "farmers who sign up with Twiga receive payment within 24 hours."
This is not the first time both TLcom and the IFC are teaming up. In July this year, both participated in a $7 million venture round that Twiga Foods announced in July. Through the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), IFC invested $3 million whiled TLCom pooled the $4 million.
Founded in 2013 by Grant Brooke (CEO) and Peter Njonjo, this latest round brings Twiga Foods' total amount of funding raised to date to at least $30.4 million, in a period of fewer than three years.