Posted by In May 2023, a few months after Kapu came out of stealth, I wrote about it as one of two Nairobi startups trying to bring Chinese-style group buying to Kenyan groceries. The other was Tushop. Both had the same pitch: pool orders from a neighbourhood, buy in bulk straight from manufacturers and farmers, and pass the savings on to households that spend close to half their income on food.
Three years later, both are still trading. That is worth noting, because over the same period many of the better-funded companies selling to Kenya’s small shops did not make it.
How the model works
Kapu was founded in January 2022 by Sam Chappatte, a former Jumia executive, and launched with US$8 million in seed funding. It sources directly from manufacturers and producers, lets customers buy in bulk as a group, and claims savings of up to 30% on fresh produce and packaged goods.
The heart of the model is the agent. Kapu started with more than 1,500 agent collection points across Nairobi, in neighbourhoods such as Eastlands, Kasarani, Kawangware, Kibra and Embakasi. Agents take orders from their neighbours, receive the goods and hand them over, and many deliver to the door. Customers get a notification when their order is ready to collect, and the company planned to take orders over WhatsApp too.
Tushop, founded in 2021 by former Unilever manager Cathy Chepkemboi, works the same way through community leaders who collect orders from their neighbours and handle the last few hundred metres. It raised US$3 million in pre-seed funding in 2022.
The idea came from China, where community group buying grew quickly in the late 2010s. There, the community leader, often a stay-at-home mother or a small neighbourhood shop, places the orders, receives the goods and manages delivery, earning a commission of around 10%. The model did best in smaller cities, where competition was less fierce.
It also fits Kenya. Pooling money to buy in bulk is already familiar through chamas, the savings groups where members share out goods bought together. What was missing was a way to use that habit for the weekly shop.
What has happened since
Kapu has grown well beyond its starting point. In January 2025 it raised a pre-Series A round led by BlackWood, with its existing investors also joining, reportedly about US$2 million. By then it said it was serving 100,000 households a month and processing 2 million orders a year. The new money is going into marketing, its logistics network and fintech features for customers, and the company has said it wants to expand across Africa.
Tushop is also still going. In 2024 it became the first online retailer to officially sell Kenya Meat Commission products.
These are small numbers next to Kenya’s grocery market, and most of them are the companies’ own figures. But both businesses are alive and growing, which is more than many of their neighbours can say.
Why group buying has held up
Over the same years, Kenya’s B2B platforms that supplied small shops went through a brutal shakeout. MarketForce closed its RejaReja business, Sendy shut down, and Wasoko cut staff and merged with Egypt’s MaxAB. They were trying to replace the wholesaler, and that meant trucks, warehouses and credit.
Group buying carries less of that weight. Orders come in before the goods are bought, so there is less stock sitting in a warehouse waiting to be sold. Goods go in bulk to one collection point rather than to hundreds of separate doorsteps. And the agent does the last-mile work for a commission instead of a salary. The agent is, in effect, a small shopkeeper who never has to hold stock.
The model still has to win customers who already buy from the mama mboga on the corner, from supermarkets and, increasingly, through delivery apps like Bolt and Uber. The savings have to be big enough to make planning ahead worth it. And as with every platform in this series, the move into fintech suggests that groceries alone may not carry the business.
Having seen group buying in both China and Kenya, I was struck by how differently the same idea plays out. In China the model rides on top of the big apps: orders, payments and delivery tracking all run through a platform people already use every day, and the community leader is mostly a pick-up point. In Kenya the agent carries far more of the load. They take orders in person or over the phone, explain the offer, often handle cash or mobile money, and rely on trust built up in the neighbourhood. The technology is lighter and the relationship matters more. [Add one thing you saw yourself that made the difference clear.]
What it says about the last mile
TradeDepot, MaxAB and Bukalapak all found that delivering goods to small shops was very hard to make pay. Kapu and Tushop are testing a different route: skip the shop, organise the customers, and let a neighbour do the last stretch. It is too early to say whether that will scale beyond Nairobi. But three years in, it looks more durable than many expected.
First published in May 2023. Updated November 2026.
