B2B Retail Marketplace Betastore Nets $2.5M to Outfit Shops in Africa

B2B retail market Betastore, based in Nigeria, has raised $2.5 million to help informal shops in West and Central Africa with financial issues and stock-outs, a report says.

The marketplace, through cutting out middlemen, will give informal traders access to fast-moving consumer goods from manufacturers and distributors.

The intent is to make the products cost-competitive, and the marketplace will collaborate with logistical partners to make sure items are delivered within a day.

Betastore aims to grow beyond its existing three markets by the end of the year, including Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon.

Steve Dakayi-Kamga, the company’s CEO, said the important thing is to scale the company through an asset-light strategy.

Dakayi-Kamga said the goal is to have the asset-light strategy help with not having “any capital or labor-intensive assets” on warehouses or its delivery fleet.

Through that, the business can optimize its tech through acquiring goods from distributors nearby.

The company plans to grow to more than 100 cities in Nigeria, the Ivory Coast and Senegal before the end of the year.

It will look at adding to its technical and leadership teams, too, and the company reportedly will debut funding in July.

Nigerian companies have been gaining steam in various arenas recently.

Tingo, a Nigerian agri-FinTech, for example, has plans to merge with MICT, the Nasdaq-listed financial service provider, to help gain $900 million in yearly revenue to expand in the African and Asian markets.

Read more: Nigerian FinTech Tingo Announces $900M Merger With MICT

The merger will combine the wealth management, share trading and insurance offering capabilities of MICT with Tingo’s FinTech and one-stop-shop marketplace.

According to Dozy Mmobuosi, who will be the CEO of MICT after the merger, Tingo was impressed with how MICT had operated in China, and the company thinks there’s a big crowd for its platform including 200 to 400 million farming community members.