Kenyan startup Solutech is a field salesforce and route-to-market automation company that has established a presence in eight countries on the continent.
Formed in 2014 by four founders, Solutech now has a team of 30 and a product used by more than 6,000 people. The startup’s platform helps field sales teams sell more, and do so more efficiently, by leveraging on powerful insights.
“With stiff competition and need for route-to-market strategies by FMCG companies in Kenya, the struggle to make day-to-day strategic decisions has always remained a huge concern to manufacturers and distributors,” CEO Alexander Odhiambo told Disrupt Africa.
“They regularly lack timely and accurate distribution data, visibility of field sales activities and inefficiencies due to traditional manual recording of activities and the nature of fragmented retail industry in Africa.”
Solutech solves that problem, providing real-time end-to-end visibility of retail distribution activities.
“With Solutech, companies have been able to witness increased productivity, a reduction of operational costs and increased revenue through access to timely, accurate and relevant customer insights,” Odhiambo said.
Solutech is fully customisable, and has been fully integrated with leading ERPs like SAP, SAGE and Oracle, as well as M-Pesa. It is also integrating merchant financing, advancing credit to MSMEs through its partnership with Kenyan fintech startup Pezesha.
Until recently fully-bootstrapped, Solutech was this month among the 60 African companies backed by Google to receive non-dilutive funding from its Black Founders Fund. Funding or no funding, it has grown from zero customers in 2014 to over 60 in 2022, across eight different countries – Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Zambia, DRC, Ethiopia and Sudan. Customers include Crown Paints PLC, GSM Africa, Flame Tree Group PLC, Car and General PLC, Senselet Food Processing PLC (Pepsico), Kenafric Industries Limited and Ketepa Limited.
“With the funding received from Google, we aim to expand to the Eastern and Western African markets. Additionally, we are aiming to diversify our product offerings to the service sector and complement Solutech with a B2B product for retailers,” said Odhiambo.
