Sendbox, the Nigeria-based e-commerce fulfilment platform for merchants in Africa, has raised $1.8 million in seed round to expand the company’s operations in other countries across West Africa, bolster the development of its product range, and hire new talent.
Investors in this round include 4DX Ventures, Enza Capital, FJLabs, and Golden Palm Investments. With participation from Flexport and YC Combinator as part of its 2021 winter cohort.
Sendbox’s total investment raised has now reached $2 million following a pre-seed round from Microtraction and 4DX Ventures in 2018, according to TechCrunch.
The company, which was founded in 2018, offers small-scale merchants selling on e-commerce and social media platforms affordable access to local and worldwide shipping options.
Sendbox provides a single location to manage both local deliveries and international shipments to the EU, UK, US, and Canada accessible to iOS and Android users, via its web application, on WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and other e-commerce platforms, and through developer APIs.
The company also provides a solution for merchants that lack the huge volume necessary to qualify for lower delivery rates through its delivery management platform, which combines logistics providers and allows tracking.
The company says its next stage of development will focus on finance and payments, followed by e-commerce and marketplace integrations across West Africa and beyond.
Emotu Balogun, CEO and Co-Founder of Sendbox said, “No matter where in the world customers are, we want African SMEs to be able to reach them. Deliveries in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, and Ibadan have made up a large proportion of business for our domestic merchants. On top of that, affordable access to the UK, EU, US, and Canada has created an opportunity to sell products to hundreds of millions of previously unreachable buyers. With this fundraise our aim is to support more and more SMEs and help them grow both locally and internationally, scaling alongside them as we connect African merchants with a global community of consumers.”
Walter Baddoo, Co-Founder and General Partner at 4DX Ventures said, “African e-commerce is accelerating faster than anybody could have imagined a decade ago and it needs smart solutions to ensure that logistics and fulfillment capacity doesn’t lag behind,” said “Not only were we impressed by Sendbox’s 300% year-on-year growth since launch, but we’re seeing the market potential balloon with over 40 million Nigerian SMEs and a projected industry value for social and e-commerce reaching $45 billion on the continent by 2025.”
