Nigerian startup Sendbox has closed its seed funding round led by 4DX Ventures, FJLabs, Golden Palm Investment and Enza Capital at $1.8 million. The peer-to-peer delivery platform for social commerce plans to scale its operations with the acquired fund. The fundraising also saw participation from Flex port and Y Combinator. Sendbox also secured an undisclosed amount from Microtraction and $125,000 from Y Combinator, bringing the total amount raised to around $2 million.
Sendbox is a logistics company with an enabling platform that allows both businesses and individuals to be able to send and receive goods within and outside the shores of Nigeria. The company became fully operational in 2018 but was founded by duo Emotu Balogun and Afolahan Olusegun in 2016.
Sendbox’s goal is to mitigate the challenge that merchants and individuals face with logistics. According to Sendbox’s CEO Emotu Balogun, “Sendbox wants to help small e-commerce merchants who sell directly to customers through their own online and offline channels with fulfilment”. The startup provides an “as-soon-as-possible” delivery service. It provides same-day to next-day delivery services for deliveries within Lagos and three- to five days for nationwide deliveries, and seven days for across borders deliveries. Sendbox makes deliveries within Nigeria and to more than 200 foreign countries.
According to Sendbox, its platform has reached more than 10,000 merchants, enabling them to increase their sales. It claims to have made over 200,000 deliveries and says almost 50 percent of its total deliveries are international.
The new funding will help Sendbox achieve its already existing goals, meet its targets as well as scale its operations. The company has shown potentials for growth, and this is one of the biggest reasons why its investors were willing to invest in the first place.
“African e-commerce is accelerating faster than anybody could have imagined a decade ago and it needs smart solutions to ensure that logistics and fulfilment capacity doesn’t lag behind. 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”, Walter Baddoo – co-founder and general partner at 4DX Ventures said about his company’s investment in Sendbox, explaining that the rate at which Sendbox is growing and its usefulness to the logistics sector made his company to make its investment.
Sendbox hopes to grow its operations and become one of Africa’s biggest fintech companies but its biggest goal remains to help businesses and individuals to conveniently transact business. “For us, our vision really is to become the e-commerce operating system for African merchants and logistics is the first entry point for the company”, Sendbox’s CEO said.
The company plans to expand its product capabilities to include payments and financing. It also plans to use the newly acquired funds to expand to other African countries as well as hire new talents.
