Own a piece of MarketForce

Since our public launch in 2020, one of the most popular requests we have received is the ability for people who love what we are building to invest in MarketForce, alongside institutional investors. When we raised our last round of funding in February 2022, we continued to explore how we might make it possible but it was difficult to include people who were not accredited investors, so it ultimately proved too complex. The idea never left our minds. 

Today, thanks to Wefunder, doing a community round like this one has become more viable. We are excited to launch this small community funding round with a maximum raise of $1,000,000 so that our community, including avid supporters, partners and customers, can invest in the company and become part owners early in our journey. We kept the terms of the round the same as our Series A round from a year ago, despite demonstrating substantial growth since then, and attracting more incredible investors such as Global Millennial Capital, PANI, Jedar Capital, Tomorrow Capital, Chui Ventures, Vastly Valuable Ventures and Kube VC. 

You can find the full details of this community round, and make an investment via our page at Wefunder. We will accept investments from $1,000, but given the small community round size, we cannot guarantee that everybody will receive their desired investment amount. 

When we started this journey, we committed to building an exceptional African company that empowers African people, communities and economies, and this community round is one way to concretize that ideal. We’re doing this because we believe that a company like MarketForce provides the opportunity to generate financial upside, not only for the merchants and partners that we serve, but also for people who understand and believe that what we are building is important for the continent. 

We want to make it clear, however, that just because you can invest in MarketForce, it doesn’t mean you should. Investments are risky. There’s no guarantee you’ll make your money back, even if you’re investing in well-known companies and well-established industries. The risks are much greater when it comes to investing in startups, which have a habit of dying, pivoting, or simply not making enough money. Startups are high-risk, high-reward all the way through: for founders, employees, their family members, and for investors large and small. 

MarketForce is a startup on an extremely ambitious mission, and success is far from guaranteed. You should not invest any funds in this community round unless you can afford to lose your entire investment. However, for those who are interested in joining in this mission and owning a piece of it, we want to share how we think about the future of MarketForce. 

Giving merchants in Africa the superpowers they need to grow in a digital age 

In 2050, there will be 2 Billion people in the African continent; shopping habits will continue to lean heavily towards small merchants, and technology will thread between suppliers of goods and financial services, and consumers, through millions of online and offline merchants. As the continent continues to grow and become more sophisticated, providing technologies that power these merchants’ businesses creates an opportunity to build a large tech giant. 

Through our SuperApp, we empower merchants with layers of digital commerce, financial and banking services, outfitting them with the technology they need to transform themselves from simple FMCG outlets to comprehensive financial service hubs for the continent’s last-mile communities. 

Over the years, we have proven the market opportunity and the ability to grow fast – onboarding over 250,000 merchants and nearly 200 brands onto the platform, growing gross merchandise value by 9x to $128M between 2021 and 2022 alone. Driven by our core e-commerce operation, our net revenue grew to $2.5M in 2022, achieving positive gross margins across our operations in H1 2023 and with a clear path to profitability. 

MarketForce has built an incredible growth engine with a core strategy centered around tier-2 city geographic growth. Our proven ability to scale means that beyond Kenya, MarketForce has expanded to 5 countries in just two years with more countries in the pipeline, creating a significant B2B distribution footprint within a combined population of 500 million people across Sub-Saharan Africa by 2025. 

Join the ride 

“Should you invest in MarketForce? If you imagine a future where African merchants are able to be resilient, achieve their financial goals, work within a less fragmented supply chain, offer better prices and product quality to consumers, use more efficient digital forms of cash collection and payments, ensure all people have access to helpful financial and banking services, and ultimately keep more of the value of trade within the local community, and you want to be a part of what we are building, then it might be worth a shot. Our mission is to be the ultimate business partner that empowers merchants in Africa to maximize their profits and grow in a digital age. The work we are doing is ambitious and exciting, and it will be more and more impactful as we grow. We’d love to have you join us in building the future of retail distribution in Africa.” – Tesh Mbaabu, Cofounder & CEO, MarketForce 

“At the intersection of e-commerce and digital financial services, MarketForce is the future of retail, with its technology offering merchants procurement options, digital payments, working capital financing, and BNPL targeting 1 million African merchants (MSMEs) by 2025. Led by a visionary and entrepreneurial team, MarketForce can execute and scale as the leading B2B marketplace in Africa due to its asset-free business model, which has a scalable unit economic model and has shown hypergrowth, including achieving a total of over 4 Million in transactions processed since launch.” – Andreea Danila, General Partner at Global Millennial Capital and MarketForce Community Round Lead 

“Africa shares many similarities with Asia’s mobile-first markets, such as India, Southeast Asia, and China, where I have invested for two decades. The availability of low-cost smartphones, easy access to the internet, and ubiquitous digital payment make these ecosystems fertile grounds for breakthrough internet companies like MarketForce.”  – William Bao Bean, General Partner – Orbit Startups (SOSV) 

Thank you for following along in our journey. You can find the full details of this community round, and make an investment via our page at Wefunder.