Founded by Angela Wachera and Elvis Juma, Mombasa-based Shambafresh.co.ke aims to change the way people buy their groceries in Kenya’s coastal town by steadily taking them off the markets to their computers and mobile phones.
Now in operation for a couple of months as a pilot as the developers put the last finish on the online grocery store, Shambafresh is a combination of a Swahili word Shamba meaning farm and an English word Fresh meaning the firm aims to deliver to shoppers groceries directly from the farms, and still fresh unlike the ordinary mama mbogas.
Speaking to TechMoran on phone Wachera said, “We work with farmers to deliver groceries to our shoppers. Sometimes we go to the farm or thy deliver the produce to us. We have a number of hotels we are working with at the moment and want to scale across Mombasa and the entire coastal region to deliver groceries and vegetables to everyone’s door step.”
Wachera says the challenge now is getting the funding to expand the business and market it to as many users as possible. Getting fresh groceries anywhere in the world is a challenge and its even harder in cities like Nairobi or Mombasa where delivery and logistics is a menace and addresses are not defined.
“We believe in technology and we don’t want to be left behind,” said the Acturial Science graduate who is trying her hands at tech for the first time. “If we raise some funding or get a partner I think we can achieve our targets faster,” she added. Together with her a friend, who has software engineering skills the two aim to cover the coastal region in a year to deliver groceries to users when they are still fresh, especially as the city gets so hot and no business can go wrong with fruits and groceries.
In Nairobi, a number of players have entered the online grocery delivery industry but none is as serious as SokoText, a Nailab accelerated startup that’s working with grassroot mama mbogas’ to get fresh produce direct from them. SokoText on the hand sources the groceries directly from farms-eliminating a number of middle-men who make the produce expensive and stale due to the complicated distribution channels they use.
We will be watching how ShambaFresh catches wildfire when its new site launches fully to the public.