Twiga Foods bet on owning Kenya's food chain; $180M later it paused Nairobi operations

Twiga Foods raised $180M+ to connect Kenyan farmers with urban retailers, quadrupled revenue in COVID, then cut staff and paused Nairobi in 2025.

Twiga Foods

它在赌什么That owning the whole chain — farm sourcing, warehousing, delivery to kiosks — would make Kenya's fragmented food market efficient enough to scale profitably.已上线

做的是什么生意

A B2B platform that buys fresh produce and FMCG goods from farmers and manufacturers and distributes them to thousands of informal retail outlets across Kenya.

启动资金：Over $180 million raised in total, including a $30 million Series B in 2019, a $50 million Series C in 2021, and a $35 million convertible note in 2023.

起因

Peter Njonjo and Grant Brooke founded Twiga Foods in Nairobi in 2014 to fix a brutal inefficiency: fragmented retail markets and layers of intermediaries made food far more expensive in Kenya than it should be. The original model connected smallholder farmers with urban vendors through an app; in 2019 Twiga added FMCG distribution, and by 2021 it served over 100,000 customers and delivered 600 metric tons a day to more than 10,000 retailers.

经过

Twiga raised a $30 million Series B in 2019 and a $50 million Series C led by Creadev in 2021 after quadrupling revenue between April 2020 and August 2021, with plans to expand to Uganda and Tanzania and a $30 million secondary for early investors. The model stayed capital-heavy — farming ventures, warehousing and a leased-truck fleet — and when funding winter arrived, 2023 brought a 33% staff cut (283 of 850 employees), the end of in-house delivery, ten closed Nairobi distribution centers and a shift to a logistics marketplace.

新闻TechCrunch: $50M Series C 新闻TechCrunch: 33% layoffs, end of in-house delivery

结果

By June 2025 Twiga had raised over $180 million but still had not proved the model scalable: it had repeatedly cut supply-chain jobs, acquired three distributors, and temporarily suspended its Nairobi operations for two months to relocate its hub, with its last major round a $35 million convertible note in 2023. Former employees told TechCabal the company took too long to abandon its capital-heavy approach.

新闻TechCabal: Nairobi operations paused

背景

Twiga Foods was founded in Nairobi in 2014 by Peter Njonjo and Grant Brooke on the bet that technology could fix Kenya's fragmented food supply chain: by connecting smallholder farmers directly with the thousands of informal kiosks that feed the country, it could undercut the layers of middlemen that made food dramatically more expensive than it should be.

The model grew quickly. Twiga raised a $30 million Series B in 2019, added FMCG distribution, and quadrupled revenue between April 2020 and August 2021, closing a $50 million Series C led by Creadev with over 100,000 customers and 600 metric tons delivered daily to more than 10,000 retailers. But the operation stayed capital-heavy — farming, warehousing and a leased-truck fleet all on its own books.

When venture funding dried up, the weight of that model showed: in 2023 Twiga cut 33% of its workforce, disbanded in-house delivery, and closed ten Nairobi distribution centers. By June 2025 it had raised over $180 million without proving scalable economics, and it suspended its Nairobi operations for two months to relocate its hub, shifting toward an asset-light, data-driven model that former employees said should have come years earlier.

这件事要成立，得有什么

Kenya's retail market was fragmented and informal, and Twiga's direct farm-to-kiosk model genuinely attacked real price inefficiency.
The pandemic period rewarded the model — revenue quadrupled — which encouraged deeper investment in owned infrastructure right before capital became scarce.
Owning farming, warehousing and delivery created fixed costs that could not shrink when buyer purchasing power fell and the cost of capital rose.
The 2025 pivot to asset-light matchmaking conceded the original bet: control of the whole chain was not worth its cost.

可借鉴之处

Owning the whole chain was the bet; the capital-heavy model couldn't survive the funding winter, and the asset-light pivot came late. Control is only an edge if unit economics hold.

后续进展

As of June 2025, Twiga Foods is still operating but contracting: it suspended Nairobi operations for two months to relocate from its Tatu City hub, runs eight distribution centers after acquiring Jumra, Sojpar and Raisons, and is cutting supply-chain roles while moving to an asset-light, data-driven model. Its last major funding was a $35 million convertible note in 2023, and investors are pushing for tighter cost discipline. The open question is whether the leaner Twiga can make the numbers work where the capital-heavy one could not.

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