Lagos – August 30th, 2021: Sabi, a B2B marketplace serving Africa’s informal sector, today announced the milestone of over 150,000 small business users on its platform. Sabi is optimizing Africa’s informal trade sector by bringing merchants and resellers into its network with curated business tools and services that help them reach new customers, improve cash flow, and streamline logistics.
Sabi was developed and operated under Rensource and has been scaling in stealth mode since mid-2020. Despite being operational in Nigeria for under a year, Sabi merchants have recorded over $1.2 billion worth of sales via MyShop, its ERP tool, and are on track to transact over $80 million annualized on MerchBuy, its B2B marketplace, in 2021. Sabi works with over 10,000 agents operating across Nigeria that interface with new merchants and service providers across multiple business categories including agriculture, FMCG, electronics, and financial services.
The informal sector contributes upwards of 60% of Nigeria’s GDP, is estimated to be worth $244 billion, and includes over 41 million micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises. Sabi is focused on ensuring ease of access to the services that merchants need as they grow their businesses, accelerating the velocity of trade in this sector by curating an ecosystem of the best service providers for B2B solutions and consolidating them into a single network. Merchants can manage their profiles in ways that are most convenient to them via offline and online channels. They can make use of sales and inventory management tools, buy and sell products, track business performance, and access financing, all in one platform.
Sabi is proudly woman-led by co-founder and CEO Anu Adasolum, former COO of Rensource and Head of JForce (Offline Sales) at Jumia. Ademola Adesina is Sabi’s co-founder. The company recently closed a seed round and has backing from marquee investors including CRE Ventures, Janngo Capital, Atlantica Ventures, and Waarde Capital.
Anu Adasolum, CEO of Sabi, commented, “Sabi is reaching an underserved yet vibrant market segment and is scaling quickly. The convenience, trust, and quality of our platform have been validated by our merchants and we look forward to onboarding more businesses as we continue to grow.”
Fatoumata Ba, Managing partner at Janngo Capital, commented, “we invested in Sabi because the team has a deep understanding of the unique network dynamics of Africa’s informal sector and, more importantly, how to serve the sector at scale without losing the advantage of its decentralized nature. Sabi has taken off in Nigeria and we look forward to supporting the company as it continues to platform informal merchants and agents to help them accelerate their business growth.”
“Ademola Adesina, co-founder of Sabi, added, “Sabi is alleviating critical bottlenecks that prevent informal businesses from growing. We’re building a bridge between the last frontier of underserved small businesses and a range of innovative services and products that weren’t available until recently.””
“Sabi is continuing to grow its network across Nigeria as the platform brings on new merchants and service providers. The company recently established partnerships that will allow it to expand its financial services offerings to include savings accounts and other complementary risk-mitigating financial products.
To learn more about the company, visit the Sabi website at www.Sabi.am.”