RWANDA—Kasha Global, a women-led and women-focused healthcare retail platform, has raised US$21 million led by South Africa Venture capital firm, Knife Capital.
Kasha sells and delivers pharmaceutical products, household goods, and consumer health products discretely to low-income consumers, resellers, pharmacies, and health facilities in East Africa.
Serving a strategic position wholesale and retail market, Kasha products cut through newborn child health, maternal health, and menstrual hygiene to family planning, sexual and reproductive health, and non-communicable diseases.
The seven-year-old startup provides a digital retail and last-mile distribution platform for pharmaceuticals and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs) with a specific product focus on women’s healthcare needs and household items.
Kasha’s customers include individual consumers, small resellers, hospitals, pharmacies, and clinics, who order products ranging from sanitary pads and contraceptives to diapers and cleaning supplies via its website or USSD.
In its first year, Kasha strictly approached the Rwandan market with a direct-to-consumer model offering last-mile delivery of health products for women and newborns.
It wouldn’t take long for small shops to begin placing orders for this same product and the e-commerce platform, easily sensing an opportunity, ventured into wholesale after acquiring the necessary pharmaceutical license to serve pharmacies, hospitals, and clinics.
Founder and CEO Joanna Bichsel said, “We have always understood that women are the most influential customer in the health space, both because they have the most health needs and are decision-makers for health in the household and unlock the rest of the population.”
Bichsel elaborated that since many health products for women are stigmatized, Kasha had purposely offered a wide variety of products, including personal care products like soap, health products like contraceptives, and household staples like rice.
From a foundling to a commercial success
Starting in Rwanda, Kasha raised US$1.5 million in seed funding from angel and impact investors.
In late 2020, after expansion into Kenya, Kasha secured a US$3.6 million Series A from Finnfund, Swedfund, DFC, and Mastercard Corporate.
Knife Capital led this recent Series B with participation from Finnfund, DFC, Tim Koogle (ex-Yahoo CEO), Beyond Capital Ventures, Altree Capital, Bamboo Capital’s BLOC Smart Africa Fund, and Five35 Ventures.
“The team Bichsel have proven their mettle in scaling rapidly to date and this round of capital will help to accelerate that,” noted Koogle on the growth-stage deal.
According to Bichsel, optimizing around health products differentiates Kasha from other East African–founded B2B e-commerce platforms, including Twiga and Wasoko, which have a more comprehensive range of SKUs outside pharmaceuticals.
Bichsel noted that Kasha had capabilities around telehealth and credit, a prominent feature of B2B e-commerce upstarts.
“If a consumer orders from us and they don’t have a prescription, we connect them to a doctor,” said Bichsel.
Moreover, there are other health tech capabilities; we offer inventory credit to pharmacies, clinics, and hospitals.
“So, we overlap in that general FMCG space, but our expertise is more in health. We also build a broader distribution network, reaching the mass market customer around the country and going to the last mile,” pointed out Bichsel.
To ensure its products are authentic, the startup works directly with manufacturers and suppliers, sourcing and stocking the products it distributes to consumers, resellers, and clinics.
This is in tandem with its last-mile efforts of using various content channels to spread information on how its consumers can keep safe, and to the benefit of its enterprise business, where it provides visibility and insights to global health organizations on route to market strategies.
Speaking on the investment, Keet van Zyl, co-founder and partner at Knife Capital, a $50 million Pan-African fund, said, “In the current economic climate, it is refreshing to come across such a high-growth capital-efficient business that is female-led and optimized to serve the large mass market segment in Africa, being especially strong at serving women customers.”
KASHA’s future is the conquest of Africa
As Africa’s youthful population continues to grow exponentially, it’s of the utmost importance that entrepreneurs create various healthcare solutions that will cater to the medical needs of the continent’s future.
Noteworthy is that based on 2022 data from the Briter Africa Investment report, annual VC investment into Africa has grown to over $5B, which is great but represents only 1% of global VC funding.
Additionally, within that 1% covering all of Africa only 2% goes to Female Founder CEOs.
Moreover, 75% of all investment on the continent goes to only 4 countries: Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, and Egypt
The startup will be using the funds from Series B to expand across Africa and invest in strategic areas of the business to further continue our high growth trajectory.
In addition to its operations in Kenya and Rwanda, Kasha, which has recently registered in South Africa, will use the investment to push its platform in the country and West Africa later this year.
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