Grant Brooke and Peter Njonjo (Twiga Foods)
Twiga Foods was created in 2014 to reduce fragmentation in the produce market. The agritech startup runs a mobile-based B2B food supply platform that supplies fresh fruits and vegetables sourced from farmers in rural Kenya to small- and medium-sized vendors, outlets and kiosks in the country’s capital, Nairobi. The mobile-based cashless platform allows Twiga Foods to offer higher prices and a guaranteed market to farmers, and lower prices and a reliable supply to vendors. It also helps to reduce post-harvest losses and waste as it matches demand with supply. Consumers also benefit as they are able to buy fresher products at lower prices thanks to a more efficient supply chain. The startup works with about 8,370 farmers and 5,226 vendors to source and deliver quality produce at fair prices. Currently, Twiga is Kenya’s largest seller of bananas, potatoes, tomatoes, and other staple commodities.
Surprisingly, not so much is in public space about Twiga Founders prior to starting the venture. CEO and co-founder, Grant Brooke was born and raised in Texas, Grant co-founded Twiga after years of academic work in Kenya’s informal markets. Brooke found himself in Kenya during graduate school studying the impact of religion on economic choice-making in informal markets and spending a lot of time researching food vendors. From there, he went to Oxford to pursue a doctorate on the subject. At Oxford, he met and became friends with Peter Njonjo, the former GM for Coca Cola in East Africa. The two began to discuss how they might apply Coke’s distribution model to produce, and from there Twiga was born. Grant has led Twiga to being one of East Africa’s faster growing enterprises, attracting top global investors, talent, development partners, and media attention in the likes of CNN, CCTV, Fast Company, and The BBC with investment raking up over $20.4million from various venture investors like DOB Equity, Omidyar Network, Wamda Capital, 1776 Seed Investors, Blue Haven Initiative, Alpha Mundi, TLCom Partners and most recently The International Finance Corporation (IFC).
Twiga promises to be that largest grocer in Africa without opening a single grocery store.
