Omnibiz, a Nigerian B2B e-commerce company, announced the completion of a $15 million pre-Series A round comprised of $5 million in equity and $10 million in debt.
Omnibiz plans to use the funds to increase its focus on gaining retail customers’ loyalty and driving their retention. In addition, the company intends to begin its regional expansion this month in cities mentioned during its seed round last year: Abidjan, Takoradi, Kumasi, and Accra.
Timon Capital led the funding. Other venture capital firms included Ventures Platform, Lofty Inc., Chapel Hill Denham, Chandaria Capital, and Musha Ventures. Some of these investors participated in the seed round of the company.
In August, the startup raised $3 million to expand into new domestic markets. The platform, which includes a mobile app, a WhatsApp channel, and a phone number that retailers can use to stock their stores, has since expanded into 12 cities across Nigeria and its first Pan-African expansion into Ghana.
Omnibiz’s retail distribution model is asset-light. When a retailer places an order on the Omnibiz platform, the goods are requested from partner distributors (traditionally known for warehousing and transportation assistance) who store goods on behalf of manufacturers.
With Omnibiz, these distributors can concentrate solely on warehousing and delegate responsibility for goods transportation to third-party logistics providers, who deliver orders to retailers within 24 hours.
Nikos Katsaounis, a partner at emerging markets VC Timon Capital, stated that his firm invested in Omnibiz because it believes the company is solving a critical problem. The FMCG supply chain, he claims, is fragmented, inefficient, and opaque. And that Omnibiz addresses all of these issues with an efficient software layer that provides much-needed data on this otherwise obscure market and supply chain. “Deepankar Rustagi is an excellent operating CEO,” he said.
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