Badili, a Kenya-based smartphone re-commerce startup, has secured $2.1 million in pre-seed funding led by Venture Catalysts, V&R Africa, Grenfell holdings and SOSV ,including family offices and angel investors from Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and India.
Founded by Rishabh Lawania (CEO) and Keshu Dubey (CTO), the startup purchases phones through its platform and its network of stores and agents around the country. It then uses a price estimation algorithm which evaluates the worth of the phone following a series of factors such as the phone’s age and model after which, the phones are refurbished, repackaged, and resold with a one-year warranty.
“We are launching in Uganda and Tanzania and have established strong partnerships with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Within the next six months, we will be expanding to a few West African markets to get our foot in the door of some of the major markets in Africa,” said Rishabh Lawania (CEO), who co-founded the startup with Keshu Dubey (CTO) early this year.
Badili performs trade-ins and buybacks on behalf of companies such as OEMs and phone dealers, and has managed to enter partnerships with brands like Samsung .The startup also buys devices directly from individuals .
“We are providing an alternative to people who don’t want to pay full price for a device, and I am more excited about the fact that we are able to help a lot of consumers buy their first smartphone,” sa
For extra caution, details of the sellers such as, ID and mugshot are recorded and in addition, they also sign an affidavit indicating that they are the genuine owners of the devices. The startup has also set up a system that can flag frequent sellers.
Badili is currently setting up and scaling technology, systems, partnerships and networks needed to build Africa’s most trusted and biggest consumer electronics re-commerce marketplace.