Kenyan social commerce startup Tushop, which enables communities in Nairobi to buy groceries more cheaply with free delivery, has secured US$3 million in pre-seed funding to expand its team and platform, and roll out across Kenya.

Founded in 2021, Tushop aims to make access to groceries more affordable and more convenient for Kenyans, and eventually all Africans. Community group-buying saves consumers up to 60 per cent on groceries compared to buying in supermarkets, dukas, or at “mama mbogas”, while providing the added convenience of free delivery.

Tushop works with “community leaders” who collate orders from their neighbours and manage door-to-door deliveries. This not only simplifies last mile delivery, but also gives the community leaders additional income for coordinating and delivering orders.

The startup’s US$3 million pre-seed round is led by 4DX Ventures with participation from JAM Fund, Breyer Capital, Chandaria Capital, TO Ventures, Golden Palm Investments, FirstCheck Africa, and DFS Lab. Kenyan retail-tech startup Wasoko (formerly Sokowatch) also joined, making its first strategic institutional investment into Tushop.

The oversubscribed round included additional participation from a number of angel investors including Olugbenga “GB” Agboola (Flutterwave CEO), Raja Kaul (Sundial Group president), Eli Pollak (Apollo Agriculture CEO), and Ida Mannoh (Chipper Cash director of growth).

The funds will be deployed to grow Tushop’s team, invest in tech to make its platform as easy to use as possible, and to further expand across Nairobi, before rolling the service out to other cities in Kenya.

“Tushop is unique in this market because we know the customer – we are our own customers! We have grown up experiencing the problem of unaffordable food on the one hand and the need to have additional “side hustles” on the other because of persistently low incomes,” said Cathy Chepkemboi, founder and CEO at Tushop.

“We also have first hand experience of the difficulties manufacturers face when moving goods through a fragmented supply chain, which creates distance between them and the customers they serve. We are therefore hyper-focused on delivering a superior experience for suppliers, “side-hustling” community leaders, as well as our end-customers in an integrated manner.”

She welcomed Tushop’s new investors on board.

“We are stoked to be working with some of the leading investors globally and locally who really understand the African space from a logistics, tech, and payments perspective, and look forward to justifying their faith in us with future growth, commercial success, and meaningful social impact. Wasoko’s investment in us is also a validating signal of the work we’ve done so far and we look forward to working closely with them to scale Tushop,” said Chepkemboi.

Peter Orth, managing partner at 4DX, said his team thought the market opportunity for Tushop was incredibly large, and that Chepkemboi was the right founder to go after it given her deep understanding of the market, and impressive execution and growth thus far.

“We’re thrilled to join such a strong team of other investors and advisors to help Tushop become the dominant player in group-buying across Africa,” he said.

Daniel Yu, CEO of Wasoko, said Tushop’s growth so far had been driven by strong leadership and a team that embodies a true understanding of consumers and their communities.

“We are excited to work with a team that shares our vision of affordability and equitable distribution of goods across Africa,” he said.