Sky.Garden, the Kenyan startup that recently declared insolvency, has stated that it has found an acquirer. As a result, Sky.Garden will continue to operate under new ownership and management, according to founder and CEO Martin Majlund in a statement.
Sky.Garden raised $4 million in a Series A round of fundraising last year, bringing its total VC funding to $5.2 million. Since 2017, the startup has had hundreds of small and medium-sized enterprises sell through its online marketplace. The startup guarantees “end-to-end” order fulfilment and earns an 8% commission on every sale made through its platform.
It’s a concept that was arguably best popularised by Amazon, albeit the e-commerce behemoth’s success in executing it has been partly due to massive economies of scale, which have given it more diversification and allowed it balance falls in some areas against expansions in others.
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Despite Sky.Garden’s reach with merchants and customers in Kenya, the company itself is substantially smaller, with only 46 employees, according to LinkedIn statistics.
Sky.Garden is a well-known company in areas such as Nairobi, where it guaranteed 24-hour delivery of goods purchased on the site. However, it is unclear how much revenue the company was making or how that figure has changed over time.
Speaking on the lessons he learned from the experience Majlund said:
“Fundraising sucks 99 out 100 times. Damn, we’ve pitched the company over and over again. To the wrong investors just finding the journey exotic. To the right investors where timing wasn’t right. But hey; it only takes 1 yes, so f… the 99 no’s. Resilience is King. We’ve mentally put Sky.Garden in the grave a handful of times during the 6 years. We’ve never done anything ethically questionable, but we’ve definitely continued where normal, sane people would have stopped. This has secured us another 5,5 years of operations.”
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“There’s no linear path from A to B. But, there are formulas to succeed and you don’t have to make the same mistakes as other people before you. I now understand why successful startup founders most likely have crashed several companies before succeeding. It’s about the Journey — Not the Destination. And I know other startup founders may disagree with me on this one. But for me it has never been about the money. But the people and the process,” he added.
In Kenya, Sky.Garden competed directly with NYSE-listed Jumia, Africa’s largest e-commerce marketplace, which is still not profitable a decade after its start, despite indications of increased e-commerce adoption in Africa.
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Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard. You can book a session and speak with him using the link: https://insightsbyexperts.com/view_expert/charles-rapulu-udoh