Copia Global, a Business to Consumer (B2C) e-commerce platform and the parent company of Copia Kenya, has entered into administration.
This comes days after the company had announced it would shut down.
In Kenya, administration proceedings are primarily governed by the Insolvency Act of 2015.
Administration occurs when a business can no longer meet its debt obligations hence a licensed insolvency practitioner is appointed to either restructure the business and come to an arrangement with creditors or to sell off assets, pay off creditors and liquidate the business.
Now, the firm is under the administration of Makenzi Muthusi and Julius Ngonga of KPMG, an audit and advisory firm.
Copia Global raised $123 million across eight funding rounds, but failure to secure new funding jeopardized its operations and over 1,000 jobs.
After 10 years operations, the firm is at a brink closure with financial constraints contributing to it’s inability to pay employees, hence massive layoffs anticipated.
“Copia Global, the parent company of Copia Kenya, could not attract capital on terms agreeable to all existing stakeholders, funders, and investors. As a result, Copia Global is winding down, leaving Copia Kenya in a position to seek capital directly,” the firm recently noted.
The firm stated that under the mandate of the administrator, “Kenya’s management team will implement a plan with a lower burn rate, an accelerated path to profitability, and a focus on the increasingly digital consumer.”
During it’s hay days the firm had employed 1,800 staff and a network of 50,000 agents in Kenya and Uganda.
The firm is now on the list of well funded Kenyan ventures that have closed due to a lack of fresh capital, including agritech startups Kune, Wefarm and Business to Business (B2B) company Zumi.
Others like Sendy and iProcure are under administration, while Twiga Foods and Marketforce are still struggling, hoping to regain investor confidence.
Copia is one of Kenya’s most funded e-commerce platforms.
Copia Global was founded by Tracey Turner and Jonathan Lewis in 2013 with a mission to provide a wide range of products to rural and peri-urban customers through an innovative e-commerce platform.