Omnibiz Raised  $15 Million In Pre-Series A Funding

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Omnibiz Raised  $15 Million In Pre-Series A Funding

Timon Capital led a $15 million pre-Series A investment in Omnibiz, a Nigerian B2B e-commerce company. Ventures Platform, Lofty Inc, Chapel Hill Denham, Chandaria Capital, and Musha Ventures all participated in the $5 million equity and $10 million debt investment round.

Omnibiz, which is present in over 12 cities in Ghana and Nigeria, provides retailers with a fully integrated digital platform. The Omnibiz app allows retailers to easily purchase and restock from over 200 product brands, including Coca-Cola and Nestle.

The money was raised in order to begin further regional expansion this month. Rustagi stated that the company intends to expand into Nigeria’s second-tier cities such as Ilorin, Asaba, and Akure, where retail is expanding. He added that because there is no support in these cities, they see enormous potential. Omnibiz aspires to be the primary B2B operating system for these cities’ informal retailers, assisting with last-mile delivery, procurement, working capital, inventory management, and operational tools for tracking sales, costs, prices, and profit.

Deepankar Rustagi, CEO and co-founder of Omnibiz, told TechCabal on a conference call that this funding came about because existing investors pushed the company to raise a pre-Series A round.

According to a 2020 report by Standard Bank, informal retail controls 90% of Africa’s consumer products and retail market. In Nigeria, companies like Alerzo and TradeDepot also provide digital solutions for informal retailers. According to Rustagi, Omnibiz is different because they digitise the entire retail network. The company does not own a logistics fleet but instead uses its platform to connect a network of logistics companies to existing distributors.

Omnibiz also allows retailers to access credit, buy-now-pay-later options, and other financial services, which was launched in November last year. Rustagi said that they added the buy-now-pay-later feature because retailers on the company’s platform often went out of stock because of a lack of capital to grow their inventory size or volume.

With MyStore, a bookkeeping solution for retailers to manage their customers and inventory, retailers can move forward faster and open multiple stores easily. The company projects that retailers on its platform will see a 4 times increase in their revenue with this added support. He added that building this system has helped the company achieve the retention of 65,000 retailers and an average retailer monthly sales of $250.

Speaking about the challenges that Omnibiz faced with their buy-now-pay-later product, Rustagi said that the company’s biggest challenge was educating the customers on the model.

The company also provides insights that shows retailers their real-time inventory stock so they can avoid purchasing goods that they may struggle to sell. In a statement shared with TechCabal, Omnibiz said that the effectiveness of this insight feature is reflected in the fact that over half of the company’s annual gross merchandise value of $130 million comes from repeat retail customers.

On the call, Rustagi also stated that these types of insights and data are one of the critical areas driving growth in the retail industry. The pricing information his company provides retailers allows them to make better stock-keeping decisions and grow their revenues and margins.

In a statement to TechCabal, Timon Capital partner Nikos Katsaounis said of the funding, “We invested in Omnibiz because we believe it is solving a much-needed problem.” The food and beverage supply chain is fragmented, inefficient, and opaque. Omnibiz addresses all of these issues through an efficient software layer that provides much-needed data on this otherwise obscure market and supply chain.”