Afrikrea, an Ivorian eCommerce startup, has raised $1 million to grow its marketplace, hire more developers and export Africa’s culture.
Based in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, Afrikrea is a marketplace for African-made fashion, art, and fabrics. The startup says it has made over $5 million in sales across more than 6,000 shops in 101 countries.
With the mission to build the global infrastructure for African culture, the startup achieved a first major step towards it by enabling sellers from any country to ship worldwide with DHL and to support that growth, the startup raised $1 million.
The round was led by the Africa-focused VC fund, Saviu.vc. Showroomprive and Id4 Ventures also participated and according to Crunchbase, this takes the total funding of the startup to $2.1 million.
The funding will allow Afrikrea to not only grow its full-fledged and mobile-first marketplace with this integrated DHL shipping solutions but also expand the team across Africa.
Afrikrea.com not only offers free shops with advanced products and transactions management tools but provides the sellers with insights and support on how to grow their business worldwide.
“We intend to share our infrastructure to all sellers aiming to export and build sustainable companies on Africa’s biggest assets — its people and culture,” co-founder and CEO, Moulaye Taboure said.
The marketplace also enables efficient exchanges with the visitors or buyers, before, during and after an order through its messaging system, which it says records over 30,000 messages every month. It also collects 10% or 15% commission on sales, plus services like promotion and visibility on the website or its social network community.
In November, it was among the ten startups who competed for the Africa Netpreneur Prize led by the Jack Ma Foundation and with a community of over 300,000 users, Taboure says Afrikrea’s aim is to roll out the best experience of Africa’s culture, designs and pieces to the world.
