Kenyan logistics platform Sendy raises $20m for expansion

Kenyan start-up Sendy, which operates an app linking delivery drivers with customers, has raised Ksh 2billion ($19.9 million) for expansion, it said on Thursday.

The five-year-old business has more than 30,000 customers in East Africa, ranging from corporate clients to individuals. The latest round of funding was led by Toyota Tsusho Corporation.

“The funding comes at a time when Sendy’s plan is to grow its customer base and expand to other African countries,” Sendy said in a statement.

The company is among a host of African start-ups seeking to harness technology to overcome challenges for African businesses contending with unreliable, fragmented and inaccessible logistics, which normally drive up costs of goods and services.

“We are on a mission to make it easy to trade in Africa,” said Sendy Chief Executive Meshack Alloys, who co-founded the company with chief operating officer Malaika Judd.

“Businesses have been able to lower the cost of logistics by up to 40 per cent and dramatically shorten the time it takes to deliver products to their customers.”

Sendy began operations in neighbouring Uganda last November and plans to expand into other African markets by 2021, it said in the statement.

Previous investors in Sendy, which has modelled itself on platforms such like Indonesia’s Go-jek, include local telecoms operator Safari com and Dutch investor DO Equity.