Nabilah Safira
TechInAfrica – The digital delivery platform Sendy has raised $2 million in funding from Dutch impact investor Goodwell Investments. The deal was announced in detail on what was posted on its website today by the investor.
Based in Nairobi, Sendy connects businesses and individuals to third-party delivery drivers of different vehicle types in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Meshack Alloys, Malaika Jud, Evanson Biwott, and Don Okoth were the founding fathers of the startup in 2014, which has now spawned 700 registered drivers on its platform, completed more than 180,000 deliveries while gaining revenues of $1.5 million just last year, as explained by Goodwell Investments in its statement. It further added that the startup’s primary revenue stream is a per delivery commission charged to the logistics partner.
“Its cutting-edge technology brings efficient capacity utilization and transparent pricing to a sector that was previously seen as being beyond change. Sendy’s platform is enabling savings of more than 20% on the logistics costs, which makes Sendy a good fit within Goodwell’s uMmunthu mandate of providing basic goods and services to people on low and middle incomes — the majority,” Joel Wanhoji explained. The senior investment manager of Goodwell East Africa sees Sendy as quite the gamechanger in the logistics sector.
As Sendy sets East Africa as part of its next expansion not too far in the future, the startup is also trying its luck on novel distribution models, such as an ‘agency model’, which makes packages aggregated at a central collection point before being delivered to the customer.
For now, the startup has yet to reveal its plans on the investment, as asked by Ventureburn. The only closest response came from Wendy Akute, the junior community manager at Sendy, who acknowledged receipt of Ventureburn’s email. Still, no newer confirmation has been extracted as of now.
Source: Ventureburn.com
