Shamba Pride Secures $1.1 Million Funding For Expansion

Agriculture start-up Shamba Pride has secured $1.1 million to support its expansion in Kenya and roll-out of its digital solution to over 1,000 digitalised shops.

Shamba Pride offers an online to offline platform that provides tools and technology to agricultural input distributors to upskill them to provide quality agricultural products to their farmers. It employs a market systems approach to connect village-level farmers to quality inputs, services, and information through women and youth-owned DigiShops powered by technology.

The funding was led by Seedstars Africa Ventures and Gray Matters Capital have announced leading a funding round of $ 1.1 million. The deal was signed in the presence of Kenyan Cabinet Secretary Betty Maina, French Minister Delegate for Foreign Trade Franck Riester, KEMSA representatives and a series of international agricultural corporates

Through the funding, Shamba Pride seeks to empower last-mile agro-dealers and cooperative entrepreneurs to digitize their operations and provide smallholder farmers with the right and affordable technology as well as quality products and services.

CEO and Founder Samuel Munguti said, “Shamba Pride is revolutionizing rural distribution systems for African farmers by transforming from traditional and informal systems to modern trade. Through Shamba Pride, existing last mile agro entrepreneurs can digitalize their operations and provide smallholder farmers with the right and affordable technology, quality products and services. The model establishes a network of smart micro-entrepreneurs serving the smallholder farmer community, allowing farmers to increase their farm productivity, sustain their employment and their household income,”

Munguti added: “The investment will propel our national growth to service hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers while creating a reliable community of smart micro-entrepreneurs offering improved services to farmers,”

Maxime Bouan, Partner at Seedstars Africa Ventures said, “Talented African early-stage entrepreneurs continue to lack funding despite providing tangible adapted solutions. We are convinced Shamba Pride’s online-to-offline model is perfectly suited to tap into a huge market opportunity by upskilling existing value chains and finally offering farmers the quality counterparts they deserve. Beyond capital, we will continue to actively support the company through additional market linkages and corporate partnerships within Africa and beyond to guarantee farmers obtain the best value.”

Agriculture is the backbone of Kenya economy and startups in this sector continue to draw the attention of investors.

Last month, Twiga Foods raised $50 million in a Series C round to scale its operation in East and West African countries. Twiga Foods runs a food supply platform that supplies fresh fruits and vegetables sourced from farmers in rural Kenya to small- and medium-sized vendors, outlets, and kiosks in Nairobi.

It claims to have over 100,000 customers who use its services across Kenya. The company says it delivers more than 600 metric tons of product to more than 10,000 retailers daily.