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Kenya’s MarketForce 360 was been selected to join Y Combinator (YC) Summer 2020 Batch, joining alumni of top startups including Stripe, Airbnb, Flutterwave, PayStack, Quora and Dropbox.
MarketForce360 received $150,000 from the summer batch of 2020 which ran from June through August. The Winter batch runs from January through March. This year, MarketForce 360 is proud and super excited to be taking part in the Summer 2020 batch.
Because of COVID-19, MarketForce360 and the entire Summer batch attended the program remotely through virtual office hours, evening talks, and meetups held over video conferencing. YC has funded close to 2,000 startups since it began its program in 2005 and the combined valuation of its portfolio is $100 Billion.
This has been a great year for MarketForce360 as in May it’s parent firm Mesozi Group, closed $350,000 seed investment to unlock new revenue streams and build the team’s capacity in East Africa.
MarketForce 360 enables consumer brands to optimize how they deliver essential goods and services to retailers and consumers by bridging the information gap in last mile distribution, while maximizing efficiency across the sales and distribution value chain.
The firm leverages on the power and availability of mobile devices by enabling both employed and independent field agents to record all customer interactions as they happen in the field, from taking orders and feedback to managing deliveries and payments; and will soon be allowing retail outlets to order and pay for goods directly from their nearest supplier, whenever they need them.
Tesh Mbaabu, Co-Founder and CEO of MarketForce 360, agreed the year has been great for the company.
“2020 has been an incredibly important year for us,” Mbaabu said. “After two bootstrapped years of R&D, building the product, and testing across various industries, we are ready to take in external capital. Initial customers love our product, so we are ready to aggressively grow our customer base as we make an impact in the expansive African retail and distribution economy. We are focused on supporting our clients to sell more during this difficult time and plan to raise additional capital within the year to support our efforts.”
With the YC and Viktoria Business funding, MarketForce 360 is building a suite of solutions which address an African economy where over 90% of the goods and services consumed are sold through an informal network of over 15 million retail outlets and millions of field agents.
