Fez Supply, a Lagos-based last-mile logistics startup with hubs throughout Nigeria, has raised $1 million led by pan-African investor Ventures Platform with participation from Voltron Capital, Acasia Ventures and different angel traders. 

Founder and CEO Seun Alley, in an announcement, stated the corporate plans to make use of the seed funding to deepen its work in Nigeria (which has a $10 billion transport and logistics market) whereas it considers enlargement — from This autumn 2023 — into different African markets, together with Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. The startup additionally intends to enhance its know-how and operation effectivity, rent extra expertise and improve its advertising spend.

Alley, who labored for over a decade in Nigeria’s banking sector and later in startups comparable to OPay and Bloc, based Fez Supply in 2020. It was a spin-off from a B2B janitorial service and aspect hustle she opened two years prior. Whereas working the enterprise, Alley acquired a number of complaints from her clients relating to the janitors: Though they did thorough cleansing within the mornings, they had been primarily absent to hold out the mandatory touch-ups all through the remainder of the day. “We realized that this occurred as a result of the janitors went on a number of errands for our purchasers’ staff,” the chief govt advised TechCrunch over a name. “And the explanation for this, we realized, was as a result of a lot of the locations they had been shopping for stuff from didn’t have a dispatch or logistics service.”

The scenario is peculiar to many companies throughout Nigeria, as evident in a easy market analysis Alley undertook earlier than launching Fez Supply. Alley stated she spoke with entrepreneurs and small enterprise homeowners, together with these outdoors and inside her circle, to ask about their main points: expertise and logistics topped the checklist.

Whereas logistics is certainly one of Nigeria’s fastest-growing industries, it’s also certainly one of its most fragmented. The sector remains to be fairly nascent in lots of components of Africa and has barely scratched the floor despite the fact that the thousands and thousands poured into startups — working in varied aspects from haulage to final mile — are but to construct sustainable companies. In the meantime, within the last-mile class, pricing, attain and supply instances are widespread complications that startups and small companies encounter; these options are what Fez Supply’s options optimize for, in line with Alley. Particular person clients can entry its providers through cellular and net apps to put and monitor orders, handle spend, collate knowledge on particular enterprise factors and make funds. Then again, the startup provides APIs and dashboards to its enterprise purchasers. Fez Supply claims to have over 17,000 clients utilizing its platform (70% are people, whereas 30% are a mix of SMEs and startups).

Final yr, the two-year-old startup launched a vertical: FEZ for fintechs, the place it helped fintechs ship debit playing cards and POS terminals to all their clients and brokers throughout Nigeria. To satisfy up with the demand, Fez Supply just lately developed a SaaS platform to onboard and confirm educated third-party two-wheeler logistics platforms, with fleet sizes of about five-10, to assist full orders that it may well’t fulfill. These third-party companions share within the income Fez Supply makes by charging people per supply (primarily based on the space lined and dimension of things) and companies a month-to-month flat-fee subscription (primarily based on a set vary of deliveries).

Fez Supply stated it accomplished 200,000 journeys final yr and grew income by 20% month-on-month. Its clientele base consists of the likes of Flutterwave, Kuda Financial institution, Moniepoint, OPay, Pink Bull and Famasi Africa, per its assertion. 

The Techstars Toronto-backed platform faces competitors in Nigeria, together with Uber, through its Uber Join product, Kwik Supply and Gokada, amongst different upstarts. Alley argues that Fez Supply’s differentiator is in its mannequin; whereas others function on-demand, her startup is a hybrid of on-demand and the hub and spoke mannequin. “We choose objects from clients in bulk and take them to a central location the place they’re zoned earlier than assigning them to riders to finish,” the CEO commented. “So I wish to check with Fez as working a hybrid mannequin. We’ve got the know-how and nonetheless personal 30% of the belongings on our platform. What that does is that if third-party companions don’t present up for any cause, we have now backup and might full our deliveries by ourselves. So for us, we expect that offers us an edge as a result of we additionally personal a big variety of belongings whereas additionally offering know-how.”

Talking on why Ventures Platform invested, Dotun Olowoporoku, common accomplice at Ventures Platform, in an announcement, stated his agency determined to again Fez Supply as a result of its know-how, which allows different market gamers to thrive, is well-aligned with the agency’s funding thesis to help market-creating innovation in underserved industries comparable to logistics.

“I’ve realized we will construct and create options round cost and core fintech. However there are different issues throughout the ecosystem that nobody is , certainly one of which is logistics,” famous Alley, who additionally had a short stint at mobility fintech Moove, when requested why she was constructing within the logistics and supply house as an alternative of fintech, the place she has a number of years of expertise.