MarketForce
The SuperApp for neighbourhood merchants in Africa.
MarketForce empowers neighbourhood merchants in Africa to source, order and pay for inventory digitally and conveniently, access a banking wallet with credit facilities, collect digital payments and earn extra income by offering agency baking services and reselling digital financial services such as airtime, electricity tokens and bill payments in their communities. Incorporated in 2019, MarketForce is a fast-growing company running an asset-light business model and is currently operational in 5 markets in Sub-Saharan Africa, with over 200,000 merchants and 180 consumer brands trading on the platform.
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Active Founders
Tesh Mbaabu
Tesh is a creative and strategic thinker from both a product and commercial perspective; experienced in business process automation and building startups in the African scene, where I focus on business development, growth and partnerships.
Mesongo Sibuti
A Forward-thinking Techprenuer and Software Architect specializing in the design, development, and scaling of technology-enabled platforms with a special interest in the field of B2B Services, Last Mile Distribution, and Data Science.
Selected answers from MarketForce's original YC application for the S20 Batch
Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.
Digitizing sales and distribution in Africa.
What is your company going to make? Please describe your product and what it does or will do.
MarketForce360 is the first of its kind, end to end sales and distribution digitalization platform offering ‘Technology as a Service’ that is in use across the entire value chain for various industries; from the manufacturers, to distributors, wholesalers, retailers and field sales agents.
We enable field agents to collect data and shopkeepers to source, order and pay for stock at anytime via interactive SMS and mobile app, and get it delivered directly to their store by the nearest wholesaler or distributor, within hours, saving them time and money that they would have had to spend if they closed shop and went out to look for stock.
The data collected is aggregated and presented through live web dashboards, from which Manufacturers, Distributors and Financial Service Providers can easily and effectively monitor and analyze the distribution channels across multiple shops and regions, informing them about who is buying their product, when they are buying it, where they are buying it, at what price, and what they’re buying it in conjunction with; enabling them to estimate demand and tailor their sales and distribution channels, marketing efforts and promotions based on real-time market trends and consumer purchasing habits; and to finally tap the potential of the African market, increasing revenue and market share.
How long have each of you been working on this? How much of that has been full-time? Please explain.
We have been working on this for 2 years full-time. The business has been bootstrapped to date, and employs 23 people.