Betastore, a fast-moving-consumer-goods company, has announced the completion of its pre-series A funding round, raising $2.5 million from a number of investors.
The company, which is based in the West African country of Nigeria, empowers its customers to get goods directly from the manufacturer. This eliminates the extra charges incurred through goods gotten from middle men.
Betastore’s pre-series A funding round had participations from investment firms like 500 Global, VestedWorld, and Loyal VC. With the $2.5 million raised, Betastore has now raised a total of $3 million since it began operations.
Coming after the fundraise, Betastore said it will use the funds to push its expansion out of Nigeria into other African countries like Ghana, Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of Congo; all these before the end of the year.
“What is really important for us is to be able to continue to scale by leveraging our asset-light model. We plan to enter new markets before the end of the year and to expand to 100 cities across Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Senegal. We are also planning to reinforce our technology and leadership teams, and to bring in new products and to improve existing ones,” Betastore CEO – Steve Dakayi-Kamga – said.
Speaking on the fundraise, on behalf of 500 Global, Amit Bhatti, said:
“We believe Betastore’s talented team is creating market efficiencies that have the potential to boost the growth of Africa’s retailers. With Betastore, merchants can get greater transparency into wholesaler inventories and price points.”
Betastore was founded in 2020 by the duo of Steve Dakayi-Kamga (who serves as CEO), and Leo-Armel Tchoudjang. Aside trading FMCGs, Betastore also runs a logistic, buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) model, and also provides smart financing for its retailers. With the Betastore wallet, users can repay loans, deposit money for operations, send, receive and save money.
“Our technology enables retailers to order on demand, access a variety of products and solves logistics headaches for them too. With Betastore, they don’t have to close their shops to go get goods from distributors stores or the market, and do not have to lose close to half of the margins in in the logistics,” Dakayi-Kamga said.
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“The mandate of some of the partners we have on board is to support the economy by financing small businesses, but are not able to lend to them because they do not have the data to inform decisions. We have the visibility of what is happening in this sector, and have data they can use to extend financing. […] The wallet helps them separate their business money from their own money, and it is directly connected to the whole banking system, meaning that retailers can receive and send money to any bank, and load cash with any agency banking platform,” Tchoudjang added.
The CEO, Dakayi-Kamga has previously worked as the head of logistics, warehousing and marketplace fulfillment department at Jumia. Tchoudjang also has previous working experience with the AccessHolding AG network in Africa.
Betastore claims it has recorded a 10x growth rate on its customer base, and increased its revenue up to 12 times.