A Nigerian and French startup that provides logistics services to B2B merchants, from social vendors to e-commerce platforms, has raised $2 million in Series A funding.
The financing round was led by XBTO Ventures, a company that invests in digital assets. Existing and new investors such as Yves Guillemot and Leonard Stiegeler were present.
In Nigeria and other parts of Africa, Kwik plays in a crowded space with well-known providers such as Gokada and YDS. Its last-mile delivery service connects businesses of different sizes to find independent delivery riders for transport of their products to their business and individual customers.
According to founder and CEO Romain Poirot-Lellig, his company wants to bring the informal economy into the formal economy.
Our goal is for Kwik to be the app choice for African social vendors and traditional merchants. He said that integrating delivery, payment and e-Commerce tools in one easy-to-use mobile app is a good idea.
Last-mile delivery and e-commerce fulfilment services have been provided by Kwik. More than 100,000 merchants have been onboarded by the company since it launched in Lagos in 2019. Poirot-Lellig said more than 75% are weekly active users.
We are not trying to build a customer app. We want to create a merchant app. The CEO put $200,000 of his money into the startup in order to build an app that merchants can use to run their online businesses, from selling to delivery to financing.
We are a software company. A community and a playground are created by us. We make sure that the rules of the playground are followed by both merchants and partners.
Romain Poirot-Lellig is the founder and CEO of Kwik.
The asset-light and marketplace model that Kwik runs connects merchants with third-party providers of bikes, trucks, vans and warehouses. It takes less than two hours to deliver packages ranging from parcels to food items.
The two-year-old company, which raised a $1.9 million seed round last March, takes an average commission of 20% for each delivery.
The last part of the puzzle, financial services, took off at the end of the year of 2021. There is more to be built around that, and the new investment helps fast-track growth in that aspect.
The financing is the last part of the project. We connect riders and financing institutions that are willing to finance bikes. We are going to launch a B2B lending marketplace by the end of the year to enable merchants to get financing.
Funding will be used for customer acquisition and finance operations in other Nigerian cities beyond Lagos and Abuja. Poirot-Lellig said the company plans to increase the number of merchants on its platform by the end of the year.
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