Chari, a Morocco-based B2B e-commerce startup with embedded financing for the FMCG sector, has secured further funding worth US$1.5 million from Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures (VKAV) to support its growth plan.
Founded in 2020 by husband and wife team Ismael and Sophia Belkhayat, Chari allows traditional proximity store owners in Morocco to order products and have them delivered. The platform has onboarded over 20,000 food businesses in Morocco, and expanded into Tunisia and Ivory Coast.
A participant in the Y Combinator S21 batch, the company raised a US$5 million seed round in late-2021, and secured further investment in January of last year. In February it raised an additional US$1 million from Orange Ventures, Orange’s venture capital investment arm, and in June it announced follow-on funding from Plug and Play.
Chari has demonstrated strong traction in the market, having already established itself as the leading B2B e-commerce platform for FMCG products in Morocco, with a clear vision to become a regional player and build additional services, which will provide the company with opportunities to capture further market share and create additional revenue streams such as embedded fintech. The startup recently became the first VC-backed startup to receive a payment license from the Central Bank of Morocco.
It has now banked an additional US$1.5 million in capital from VKAV, formed in 2021 as a joint venture between Kepple Africa Ventures (KAV), a Japanese venture capital firm, and Verod Holdings (Verod), an African growth capital private equity firm. Led by partners Satoshi Shinada, Ryosuke Yamawaki, and Ory Okolloh, the firm announced in March it had raised US$43 million for its pan-African venture fund, which invests in scalable, tech-enabled, post-revenue startups addressing difficult challenges on the continent.
“We are thrilled to onboard VKAV as our partner as we establish a cutting-edge and fundamental financial services infrastructure for the mass market in our country. With VKAV’s extensive network across Africa and profound connections with the Japanese corporate society, we believe they will consistently bring value to our endeavours,” said Ismael Belkhayat.
Ryosuke Yamawaki, who will join Chari’s board, said Chari was uniquely positioned to transform the informal retail sector and redefine the category of informal trade in Africa.
“We firmly believe that their innovative approach will benefit the local market and serve as a showcase to the rest of the world,” he said.
