Wasoko (“people of the market” in Swahili) is transforming communities across Africa by revolutionizing access to essential goods and services. We are East Africa’s biggest digitized retail distribution platform powered by our own in-house logistics network. Tens of thousands of informal retailers across seven countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia) use Wasoko to order everyday essential goods and receive working capital financing.
The informal retailers of Africa today are the primary if not the only channel used by consumers to purchase essential goods worth over $600 billion per year. The fragmented infrastructure across large land mass, distributed but diverse population and rather a smaller basket size spend does not yet lend themselves to big basket retail or mass consumer eCommerce. Instead, the informal retail ecosystem is THE channel for building the plumbing for digital and consumer
commerce across Africa.
This is Wasoko’s opportunity. Wasoko with its brand, scale and logistics network is best positioned to build the technology-leveraged rails to serve the 1+ billion African consumers through informal retailers. We are building a digital-first operating system for informal retailers, initially focusing on B2B distribution but quickly incorporating other tools and services to help communities across Africa get more for less.
