Former Jumia Kenya executives have launched a new digital marketplace, known as Kapu that is set to compete with rival their former employer after raising $8 million (Sh981 million) from international investors.
Kapu’s team is led by former Jumia chief executive Sam Chappatte and former chief operations officer Cyrus Onyiego, both of whom have now taken similar roles at Kapu.The duoleft Jumia in January this year.
Other managers are Meera Dhanani who served as chief marketing officer at Jumia and Stanislas Barth who was the head of offline Sales. The two will spearhead marketing and supply respectively at Kapu.
Mr Chappatte said the platform had been operating on a pilot basis from early this year, and has processed one million customer orders working with over 1,500 agents countrywide.
“Our goal at Kapu is to build the most relevant model of e-commerce for the majority of urban consumers in Africa,” Mr Chappatte said, noting that by working with existing community groups and local entrepreneurs, “we believe we can play a part in reducing the cost of goods and unlocking opportunities for millions of people.”
Consumers will be able to purchase a menu of goods such as cooking oil, sugar, flour, farm produce, and toiletries.
Kapu’s key value proposition is that its prices are lower on some products compared to major supermarkets.
The platform looks to capitalise on economies of scale by aggregating several deliveries to each agent drop. They also enter into discount arrangements with suppliers based on volume of stock bought.
Kapu says it sources its trade goods directly from farm producers and manufacturers, saying this minimises logistics costs and wastage hence the possibility of sustainably passing on the savings to their customers.