ShopZetu, a Kenyan fashion e-commerce startup, recently secured $1 million in pre-seed funding to support its expansion plans. The investment round was led by Chui Ventures, with participation from Launch Africa, Roselake Ventures, and Logos Ventures. Notable angel investors who also contributed to the funding include Kendall Tang (CEO of RT Knits), Ben Munoz (co-founder and CEO of Nadine West), Sumit Bhasin (Estee Lauder Inc), Patricia Ithau (CEO of WPP Scangroup), and Peter Njonjo (co-founder and CEO of Twiga Foods).
The primary intent behind this investment is to fuel ShopZetu’s growth as it strives to become the leading lifestyle platform in Africa. With the raised funds, ShopZetu plans to expand its product offerings to include beauty and home décor categories, addressing the increasing demands of style-conscious women across the continent. Additionally, the startup aims to scale its operations beyond Kenya, its country of origin, by trialing regional delivery services in Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. This expansion strategy involves more than tripling the number of vendors on the platform to reach a total of 1,000.
Reasons for the Investment
The investors’ decision to back ShopZetu stems from several key factors that indicate significant growth potential. One crucial factor is the sizeable market opportunity presented by the fashion industry in sub-Saharan Africa. While second-hand clothing currently dominates the market, there is a gradual shift towards affordable new clothing options. ShopZetu’s focus on providing accessible fashion choices positions the startup to capitalize on this changing consumer preference and tap into the growing fashion-conscious, tech-savvy population in Africa.
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Another compelling reason for the investment is ShopZetu’s unique value proposition as a multi-brand marketplace. The fashion industry in Africa is highly fragmented, with numerous sellers operating offline and online across platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. This fragmentation leads to a cumbersome shopping process, lack of price visibility, and diminished customer trust. By aggregating the available supply of fashion and lifestyle products under one platform, ShopZetu aims to solve these issues and improve the overall shopping experience.
Furthermore, investors are drawn to ShopZetu’s vendor-centric approach and the range of services it offers to support vendors’ success. By providing services such as content creation, digital marketing, warehousing, last-mile delivery, and returns management, ShopZetu lowers barriers for vendors to establish and scale their fashion brands. This comprehensive support ecosystem positions ShopZetu as a valuable partner for vendors, fostering long-term relationships and enhancing the platform’s attractiveness to both sellers and buyers.
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A Look at ShopZetu
ShopZetu was founded in 2021 by Marvin Kiragu, who serves as the CEO, and Wandia Gichuru, a co-founder of the popular Kenyan fashion brand Vivo. The startup primarily operates in Kenya but has ambitious plans to expand its reach. While initially focused on its home market, ShopZetu aims to establish a regional presence by trialing delivery services in Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda.
As a fashion e-commerce platform, ShopZetu offers a diverse range of fashion and lifestyle products to cater to the needs of young and style-conscious women in Africa. The marketplace currently hosts over 300 vendors, consisting of both large and small local manufacturers, as well as traders of imported fashion products. These vendors have listed more than 20,000 products on the ShopZetu platform.
ShopZetu follows a commission-based revenue model, where vendors pay a commission for sales generated on the platform, as well as for additional services like delivery. To further support vendors, ShopZetu offers various services such as content creation, digital marketing, warehousing, and last-mile delivery at subsidized costs. The startup aims to lower the barriers for aspiring fashion brands to enter and thrive in the online market, providing case studies of successful brands that have incubated and scaled through ShopZetu.
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By targeting the growing fashion industry in sub-Saharan Africa and addressing the challenges of fragmentation, trust, and accessibility, ShopZetu is poised for growth and aims to become a prominent player in the region’s fashion e-commerce landscape.
ShopZetu fashion ShopZetu fashion
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