Kasha, an East Africa’s digital platform for last mile access to health. today announced its Series B financing of over $21 million or R377 million.
The funding is led by Knife Capital, a pan African VC based out of South Africa, with participation from FinnFund, DFC, Altree Capital, Tim Koogle and Pam Scott, Beyond Capital Ventures, Bamboo Capital’s BLOC Smart Africa Fund, Five35 Ventures and other new and existing investors. With Series B funding, Kasha is scaling operations into South and West Africa to be Africa’s leading digital health access platform.
Kasha is a digital retail and last mile distribution platform for pharmaceuticals and fast moving consumer goods serving consumers, resellers, pharmacies, hospitals and clinics with genuine quality affordable products. It also serves enterprises as a channel partner by leveraging their sales and last mile distribution network, data analytics and HealthTech services to enable pharmaceutical manufacturers and global health organizations to increase access to quality health products through marketing, consumer insights and end-to-end distribution visibility to the last mile.
From Kasha’s start in Rwanda in 2016, the company has optimized for women as their target customer segment with the understanding that women are the most influential segment for health products and household goods and yet still very much underserved. In Africa, women are the decision makers on 80% of household purchases and 60% of small shop owners are women. Today, female customers represent Kasha’s largest customer base.
Rapidly growing within Kenya and Rwanda, Kasha commenced operations in South Africa and will expand to West Africa later in 2023. Kasha is also using the Series B funding to further invest in their digital platform and offering for enterprise services to become Africa’s leading platform for last mile access to health.
Kasha has experienced exponential growth with ARR over 50x since the close of their Series A. Their impressive growth journey will continue through country expansion, executing on its enterprise services contracts with blue chip clients and converting its strong pipeline of pharma manufacturers, FMCG suppliers and global health organizations.
“Having reached this major milestone of closing our Series B, we are even more inspired and determined to achieve Kasha’s mission of being Africa’s leading digital platform for last mile access to health,” says Joanna Bichsel, Founder & CEO of Kasha Global.
“The exponential revenue growth we’ve experienced over the last several years was driven by the high market demand for quality, affordable health products and household goods from mass market customers in urban and rural areas of East Africa, and this has proven out our business model and our team’s ability to execute.
“With Knife Capital leading our Series B, bringing their strong track record of portfolio companies that have scaled across the continent with successful exits to industry leading global corporations, provides us with the proven experience we need to achieve our ambitions as a company and to take it to the next level.
“We will be using the funds from Series B to expand across Africa and investing in strategic areas of the business to further continue our high growth trajectory. We are especially excited to have the continued support and reinvestment from existing Kasha investors such as FinnFund, DFC, Beyond Capital Ventures and others.”
Kasha is a female founded, female-led company. Africa’s startup funding landscape has evolved rapidly over the last 5 years, growing to over $5 billion per annum. This still only represents 1% of global startup funding. Of that 1%, less than 2% goes towards female founder CEO led companies and 75% goes towards companies which started in Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt and Kenya. (Data from Briter Bridges). Kasha was the first tech startup with on the ground logistics operations that was built and started in Rwanda and then expanded into other African countries. Kasha has now raised more VC funding than any other startup in the country and will be using the funding to scale across Africa.
“We are excited about leading Kasha’s Series B round bringing along credible value-adding investors,” says Keet van Zyl, Knife Capital founding partner.
“In the current economic climate it is refreshing to come across such a high-growth capital efficient business that is female-led and optimised to serve the large mass market segment in Africa, being especially strong at serving women customers. We look forward to being a partner in the pan African expansion journey with this purpose driven dedicated team.”
