TradeDepot, a B2B market that connects micro-retailers with distributors and producers of fast-paced shopper items (FMCGs), has acquired Inexperienced Lion, its competitor in Ghana, for an undisclosed quantity, paving the best way for its development, and the supply of its providers throughout the West African nation.
The acquisition entails a full take-over of Inexperienced Lion’s belongings, relationships in Ghana and its workers. Inexperienced Lion had developed fintech options to allow merchants entry financing, and a digital ledger Wysr, which retailers use for inventory monitoring and bookkeeping. Inexperienced Lion was co-founded by Jorge de Rojas, Enrique Moreno de la Cova and Miguel de Rojas in 2018.
Inexperienced Lion has to this point made 29,854 transactions with 4,404 clients – making it one of many largest B2B e-commerce platforms in Ghana. By September final yr, it had a presence in 4 cities with plans to enter extra after it raised debt funding from World Social Affect Investments. It additionally appeared to develop its clients to fifteen,000 by the tip of this yr. Earlier than buying Inexperienced Lion, TradeDepot was solely lively in Accra, Ghana’s capital metropolis.
TradeDepot is now set to speed up its development throughout the nation by constructing on what Inexperienced Lion had achieved and utilizing its information, expertise and logistics community to attach extra neighborhood retailers to suppliers, whereas offering them with entry to financing choices like loans or BNPL help. The BNPL providing is embedded within the firm’s ShopTopUp platform.
“Ghana represents a big marketplace for shopper items in Africa and we’re excited to deliver the Inexperienced Lion staff onboard to drive development and prosperity for extra retailers and distributors within the nation. We look ahead to deepening our relationship with the market and dealing with extra companions to maximise the alternatives that abound in Ghana and past,” stated TradeDepot CEO and co-founder Onyekachi Izukanne.
TradeDepot, which was based in 2016 and lately raised $110M in sequence B funding, makes use of its personal warehouses and fleets of drivers to distribute FMCGs to its community of micro-retailers throughout Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa. The Sequence B spherical stays one of many largest for B2B e-commerce platforms in Africa.
It began off in Nigeria distributing milk to small retailers earlier than diversifying to different fast-paced items. Based on a previous interview, the startup is now servicing greater than 100,000 retailers. Its predominant opponents are Sokowatch and Marketforce, scaleups which can be additionally streaming the casual retail provide chain.
