Bwala Africa has raised undisclosed funding from Justin Caldbeck, a Silicon Valley investor in startups such as Grubhub, Snapchat, Stitchfix, Taskrabbit, Uber, and Opendoor. Bwala, a last mile logistics marketplace that help brands easily deliver their merchandise to consumers, has also expanded to Kampala, Uganda.
Caldbeck invested and will be joining Bwala Africa as a Board Member. “I would like to officially welcome San Francisco based Investor and entrepreneur, Justin Caldbeck to Bwala Africa as a Board Member. Justin was previously Co-Founder of Binary Capital and a former partner at Lightspeed Ventures,” said Kennedy Nyabwala, Bwala Africa’s founder and CEO. Bwala will be Justin’s first African investment and will be helpful in aiding the firm’s regional expansion as well as raising more funds from VCs.
This latest funding announcement follows Bwala Africa’s Ksh 24,000,000 debt financing from South African bank CFC Stanbic in September last year. The September funding saw the firm unveil 8 new trucks from ISUZU East Africa, four directly funded by CFC and the other 4 funded internally by Bwala Group to meet its growing demand for last-mile deliveries in Nairobi.
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The firm also announced BwalaPay, an escrow payment service to collect payments for its customers. BwalaPay allows customers to pay on delivery. Their offerings are seeing accelerating adoption from a wide range of brands including Jumia, Naivas, Copia among others. It has made over 100 deliveries already and is signing up more fleet partners and truck owners to its platform for last mile fleet connectivity in Uganda.
“Bwala Uganda officially kicked off operations on March 1st 2019,” said the founder. “We have landed major partnerships with some of the largest super stores in the country and are powering their last mile deliveries. So far, we have fulfilled over 100 deliveries and are eyeing more by the close of this quarter,” he added.
In Kenya, Bwala Africa is working on Ksh 100 million state-of-the-art warehouse set for August 2019 launch in addition to its 3,000 square feet warehouse in Nairobi’s Industrial Area. The new warehouse will help the firm serve more clients in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu towns where it recently expanded as well as its new Kampala businesses.