Twiga Foods Appoints Charles Ballard As New CEO

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Today, the seven-year-old company is announcing a $50 million Series C round to scale its efforts in the East African nation and other neighbouring countries. For most of Twiga’s operational history, it connected vendors and outlets with farmers via an app to access different agricultural produce. But in 2019, the company began to connect FMCGs and manufacturers with retailers in Kenya in a bid to increase revenue, thereby dipping its hands into a space with regional players such as Sokowatch and MarketForce. “We see ourselves as building a one-stop-shop for the informal retailer and all their needs. The B2B e-commerce food distribution platform claims that over 100,000 customers use its services across Kenya while delivering more than 600 metric tons of product to 10,000+ retailers daily. Kenya’s Twiga Foods eyes West Africa after $30M raise led by GoldmanNjonjo affirms that smallholder farmers remain at the core of Twiga’s operations. But having worked with them at scale and distributing fresh produce over the years, the Kenyan company has identified some challenges, especially in the traceability of some produce like tomatoes. Once the company manages to set it up, Njonjo says the model might be spun off as a separate business to maintain a more asset-light approach to expansion. Since 2014, Twiga Foods has been using technology to build supply chains in food and retail distribution on the continent, starting with Kenya.