Kenya’s Kune, which delivers freshly made, ready to eat meals at affordable prices, has closed a pre-seed funding round worth US$1 million to enable it scale after a successful pilot.
Pan-African venture capital firm Launch Africa Ventures led the pre-seed round. Other anchor investments that took part include Century Oak Capital GmbH and Consonance.
Launched by French entrepreneur Robin Reecht in 2020, Kune is a food delivery service that aims to provide busy modern Nairobians with access to freshly prepared meals at affordable prices.
Aimed at clients from all social groups, Kune’s ready meals promise to be at least half, if not three times, less than the typical price of restaurants and fast food. The startup ran a successful pilot in early 2021 and it will be now launching its freshly made meals and on-demand delivery service in August, with the capacity to produce up to 5,000 servings a day to Nairobi’s working class and middle-income customers.
After three intensive months spent structuring the company, finding land for the factory and hiring key team members, Reecht started fundraising and he is delighted that Kune has attracted this level of interest from investors who immediately saw the potential to grow Kune not only in Kenya but across Sub-Saharan Africa.
Based on a hybrid model combining both cloud and dark kitchen concepts, all Kune meals are made and packaged on site at its factory “hub”, and then delivered on-demand directly to both its online customers, and to its retail and corporate customers.
Launch Africa is excited to be leading the first round of financing for this exciting new startup in the Kenyan food sector. Leveraging the cloud kitchen model and owning the entire supply chain provides a massive growth and scaling opportunity for Kune Africa and Launch Africa is looking forward to seeing the business take off and grow.