Sky.Garden's Amazon-for-Kenya bet: $5.2M raised, failed round, two rescues, gone

Sky.Garden was a Nairobi-based mobile-first e-commerce marketplace connecting small Kenyan businesses to buyers, with end-to-end fulfillment, 24-hour delivery in Nairobi, and an 8% commission per transaction.

Kenyan SMEs would sell online via a mobile-first Amazon-style marketplace with end-to-end logistics, and the 8% cut would cover African e-commerce's cash costs.

$1.2M seed (2018) and a $4M Series A (2021) led by SANAD Fund for MSME with Aavishkaar and Uncovered Fund — about $5.2M in venture funding; acquired by Lipa Later for ~KSh 250M (US$1.6M), which then invested another KSh 250M in the 2023 relaunch.

Danish founders Martin Majlund and Christian Grubak launched Sky.Garden in Nairobi in 2017 to help small Kenyan retailers digitize online and offline sales. The platform promised an Amazon-like experience in a market where Jumia was the only comparable player, with 24-hour delivery in Nairobi and cash-on-delivery built in because payment cards were rare.

After a $1.2M seed and a $4M Series A in 2021 (SANAD Fund for MSME, Aavishkaar, Uncovered Fund), Sky.Garden served more than 15,000 sellers. In September 2022, as venture funding froze across emerging markets, a follow-on round failed; Majlund gave staff 30 days' notice and planned an October 16 closure. In November 2022 an unnamed investor bought the IP and the Kenyan company, and TechCrunch later reported Lipa Later as the acquirer. In late 2023 Lipa Later injected KSh 250M (~$1.6M) to relaunch Sky.Garden as a social-commerce ecosystem — Sky.Commerce, Sky.Wallet, Sky.Logistics, Sky.Tickets — with BNPL, targeting 100,000 merchants.

Gone: Lipa Later itself was placed under administration on March 24, 2025 after failing to raise fresh funding, two years after acquiring Sky.Garden — ending the marketplace's second life.

Sky.Garden bet Kenyan SMEs would leapfrog to a marketplace model, but African e-commerce's unit economics — COD, no courier, card hesitancy — were never covered by its 8% commission.

It depended on a steady flow of venture capital in a market where investors pulled back sharply in 2022; one failed follow-on round triggered the closure notice.

The rescue strategy compounded risk: Lipa Later bought the platform while struggling itself, then collapsed two years later, so Sky.Garden's survival depended on another startup's balance sheet.

The pivot to social commerce and BNPL in 2023 was an attempt to escape marketplace economics, but it needed exactly the fresh funding that never arrived.

A marketplace needs logistics, trust and payment rails that Africa's cash-based markets don't have yet; Sky.Garden's 8% take couldn't fund them, and its rescue buyer was as fragile as the startup.

As of September 2, 2026, Sky.Garden no longer operates: after its failed 2022 funding round and planned October closure, Lipa Later acquired the IP and Kenyan company and relaunched it in December 2023 as a social-commerce brand with a KSh 250M investment. Lipa Later was placed under administration on March 24, 2025 after failing to raise fresh funding, with a Moore JVB administrator appointed, ending Sky.Garden's second life. Early investors' returns were written off; the platform joined Sendy, Kune Foods, BRCK and others as Kenyan tech closures of the 2022–2025 downturn.