Afrigather 
Omnibiz, a Nigerian B2B e-commerce firm, has not too long ago secured a $15 million pre-Sequence A funding led by Timon Capital. The increase is structured as a $5M fairness and $10M debt funding deal and noticed participation from Ventures Platform, Lofty Inc, Chapel Hill Denham, Chandaria Capital, and Musha Ventures.
Current in over 12 cities in Ghana and Nigeria, Omnibiz gives retailers with a completely built-in digital platform. Retailers should purchase and restock conveniently from over 200 product manufacturers, equivalent to Coca-Cola and Nestle, by the Omnibiz app.
The fund was raised to start additional regional enlargement, beginning this month. Rustagi stated the corporate needs to broaden to second-tier cities in Nigeria like Ilorin, Asaba, and Akure, the place retail is growing. He added that there isn’t any assist in these cities and so, they see big potential there. Omnibiz needs to turn into the first B2B working system for casual retailers in these cities by serving to with last-mile supply, procurement, working capital, stock administration, and operational instruments for monitoring gross sales, price, costs, and revenue.
Talking to TechCabal on a name, Deepankar Rustagi, CEO and co-founder of Omnibiz, stated that this funding took place as a result of current traders motivated the corporate to boost a pre-Sequence A.
In line with a 2020 report by Standard Bank, casual retail controls 90% of Africa’s shopper merchandise and retail market. In Nigeria, corporations like Alerzo and TradeDepot additionally present digital options for casual retailers. In line with Rustagi, Omnibiz is totally different as a result of they digitise your entire retail community. The corporate doesn’t personal a logistics fleet however as a substitute makes use of its platform to attach a community of logistics corporations to current distributors.
Omnibiz additionally permits retailers to entry credit score, buy-now-pay-later choices, and different monetary providers, which was launched in November last year. Rustagi stated that they added the buy-now-pay-later function as a result of retailers on the corporate’s platform usually went out of inventory due to an absence of capital to develop their stock dimension or quantity.
With MyStore, a bookkeeping answer for retailers to handle their prospects and stock, retailers can transfer ahead quicker and open a number of shops simply. The corporate tasks that retailers on its platform will see a 4 instances improve of their income with this added assist. He added that constructing this method has helped the corporate obtain the retention of 65,000 retailers and a median retailer month-to-month gross sales of $250.
Talking in regards to the challenges that Omnibiz confronted with their buy-now-pay-later product, Rustagi stated that the corporate’s greatest problem was educating the purchasers on the mannequin.
The corporate additionally gives insights that reveals retailers their real-time stock inventory to allow them to keep away from buying items that they could wrestle to promote. In an announcement shared with TechCabal, Omnibiz stated that the effectiveness of this perception function is mirrored in the truth that over half of the corporate’s annual gross merchandise worth of $130 million comes from repeat retail prospects.
Rustagi additionally stated on the decision that these sorts of insights and knowledge are one of many essential areas spurring progress within the retail business. With the pricing data his firm gives retailers with, the retailers are in a position to make higher selections with their stock-keeping and develop their revenues and margins.
In an announcement shared with TechCabal, Nikos Katsaounis, a companion at Timon Capital, stated regarding the increase, “We invested in Omnibiz as a result of we consider that it’s fixing a much-needed downside. The FMCG provide chain is fragmented, inefficient, and opaque. Omnibiz tackles all these issues and addresses them with an environment friendly software program layer that gives much-needed knowledge on this in any other case obscure market and provide chain.”
