A Kenyan beverage startUp, African Originals is seeking to raise $700,000 to scale its operations.
In an Interview with Techtrends, African Originals founder Alexandra Chappate says the firm is running the crowdfunding campaign to raise enough money to invest in the brand to get it to a higher level.

Kenyan Originals was launched three years ago with a mixture of seed funding from Alex and Chandaria Capital as the first investors. The company has since brought on board more investors like Chandaria capital who understand distribution and manufacturing who can advise and support them in the industry.

The firm has been crafting beverages using ingredients sourced from local farmers which are then crafted at its Nairobi’s Baba Dogo area. It also has three brands under the umbrella Africa Originals including Kenyan Originals, African Originals and 58.

African Originals intends to raise its funding through a via campaign through Crowd cube, a British investment crowdfunding platform. The crowdfunding is set to go live tomorrow 7th June.

Once the crowdfunding goes live in June, interested investors can go to the Crowd cube site and pay. They can do a minimum ticket of 10 Pounds which is almost the equivalent of Ksh1,500 or a maximum ticket of 50,000 Pounds. ’she told Techtrends
In return, investors will get shares in the company at the equivalent of the valuation credited towards the funding. The investors will be able to get dividends once we start making money and break even in 12 months.

‘’We’ve got great momentum on our beverages specifically tonics and Ciders and we’re about to do a new pack change as well. We need to invest in the brand to get it to a higher level. We’ve got good-ish availability now, so we want to invest in wider awareness for the brand,” Chappate says.

Money raised from the funding will partly go to expansion and capacity development.

‘’We’ve got plenty of capacity and we want to continue to invest as we are growing. We are here to create a strong manufacturing site in Kenya and we want to create a world-class beverage production facility across alcohol and soft drinks, ‘’ she added.

Alex also notes that there’s a big gap in quality beverage products with local ingredients. For instance, in the spirit space nothing is being distilled with real ingredients. It will be a spirit base and then flavoring added or some are actually imported which means like it’s much more expensive, hence there’s a difference on pricing against the quality of that product.

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