Kenyan fashion e-Commerce startup ShopZetu raises pre-seed funding to fuel growth of its marketplace

Kenyan fashion e-Commerce startup ShopZetu has raised $1 million pre-seed funding to fuel growth of its fashion marketplace beyond Kenya. The startup is set to add beauty and home décor categories to its portfolio, in response to the growing needs of the young and style-conscious women in Africa.

The pre-seed funding round was led by Chui Ventures, with participation from Launch Africa, Roselake Ventures, and Logos Ventures. Angel investors that took part in the round include Kendall Tang, the CEO of RT Knits; Ben Munoz, the co-founder and CEO of Nadine West; Sumit Bhasin of Estee Lauder Inc; Patricia Ithau, the CEO of WPP Scangroup, and Peter Njonjo, the co-founder and CEO of Twiga Foods.

Marvin Kiragu, CEO, ShopZetu: ''The goal is for ShopZetu to become the leading lifestyle platform. We are looking to expand our beauty, skincare, hair and home décor offerings, which are all expressions of one’s identity. We want to become a one stop shop.''

Marvin Co-founded the startup with Wandia Gichuru, also Co-founder of the popular Kenyan fashion brand Vivo. ShopZetu was born out of the need for a multi-brand marketplace to bridge a highly-fragmented industry that has hundreds of thousands of sellers offline and online including on Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp.

ShopZetu’s over 300 vendors, mainly made up of large and small local manufacturers, and traders of imported fashion products, have currently listed more than 20,000 products on the ShopZetu marketplace. Vendor onboarding is free, however, they pay a commission for sales generated on the platform, and for other additional services including delivery. The startup requires vendors selling on the marketplace to, amongst other conditions, be well stocked, have high quality products and inclusive-sizing. The startup has in the past two years, served over 30,000 customers, and sold more than 100,000 products, while achieving over 400% increase in monthly orders since January 2021.

ShopZetu is eyeing the growing fashion industry in sub-Saharan Africa, which is currently dominated by second-hand clothing. However, startups like ShopZetu are banking their growth on affordable new clothing options, and the growing fashion-conscious, tech savvy population in Africa.

www.shopzetu.com
www.launchafrica.vc