TradeDepot, a leading B2B e-commerce and embedded finance platform in Africa, on Wednesday said it has acquired Green Lion, a competitor which it describes as the biggest and fastest-growing B2B e-commerce platform in Ghana. The move is meant to help TradeDepot accelerate the delivery of its services across the West African country.
Founded in 2018, Green Lion enables digital commerce for neighbourhood retailers in Ghana. Building on this work, TradeDepot will leverage its data, technology, and robust logistics operations to connect more retailers in more Ghanaian cities to suppliers and make financing more accessible and affordable, the company said in a statement.
According to data cited by TradeDepot, Ghana’s retail sector is valued at $24.4 billion and is expected to reach $33.16 billion by 2024, with SME retailers accounting for about 90% of the market.
“Ghana represents a significant market for consumer goods in Africa and we are excited to bring the Green Lion team onboard to drive growth and prosperity for more retailers and distributors in the country,” said Onyekachi Izukanne, CEO and co-founder of TradeDepot.
TradeDepot already has active operations in Ghana, as well as its operations in Nigeria and South Africa, and this acquisition is expected to expedite the delivery of its services to more cities to enable increased sales, higher margins, and other value-added services for all parties across the retail value chain.
TradeDepot has built a network of leading consumer goods brands and SME retailers across Africa and created a proprietary risk scoring engine that uses retailers’ purchase history, previous repayment performance, and other related data points to predict their creditworthiness.
Through its ShopTopUp platform, the company offers a broad range of consumer goods to SME retailers within its network and provides credit lines to enable retailers to access inventory and pay in instalments as they sell on to their own customers.
“It is an exciting time for B2B e-commerce in Africa and we are thrilled by the opportunity to drive more value in the Ghanaian ecosystem and all over the continent,” Jorge de Rojas from Green Lion added.
TradeDepot will take on all existing Green Lion Africa relationships and assets in Ghana, the company said. In addition, the Green Lion team will join TradeDepot to support its mission to “build the future of retail and make food and supplies more accessible and affordable for even the most remote consumers” in Africa.
The TradeDepot-Green Lion deal is the latest in a string of acquisition deals the African tech landscape has witnessed since the year began. Late January, Egyptian-American cloud security startup Magalix was acquired by Weaveworks Limited, a GitOps company with headquarters in London and San Francisco, for an undisclosed sum.
This month, there have been at least four mergers and acquisitions (M&A) announcements involving African startups.
Kenyan insurance technology company Lami bought Bluewave Insurance Agency, another insurtech startup in the country, pan-African fintech Branch International acquired a majority stake in Century Microfinance Bank, which provides financial services to micro, small and medium businesses, and last week, Cape Town-based BNPL startup PayJustNow sold an 85% stake to Weaver Fintech.
In December, TradeDepot announced it had raised $110 million in an equity and debt Series B funding round to support the delivery of Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) services to 5 million SME retailers and drive further expansion of its merchant platform across the continent.
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