Another Nigerian B2B ordering platform for retailers has successfully secured a seed funding round. Sabi, which claims to have been operating “in stealth mode” since 2020, says that 150,000 retailers have signed up to its platform.
Sabi (meaning “knowledge”) has received its seed funding from CRE Ventures, Janngo Capital, Atlantica Ventures, and Waarde Capital.
The numbers Sabi quotes are extraordinary. Trendtype cannot independently verify them and at face value they are extremely high for such a young, unknown and lightly funded company. These are the claims:
- Sabi merchants have recorded over US$1.2bn worth of sales via MyShop, its Enterprise resource planning (ERP) tool
- Annualised sales of $80m through MerchBuy, its B2B marketplace
- 10,000 agents, who sign up partner retailers
- 150,000 retailers signed up onto the platform
We cannot find any information about MyShop, which is strange for software that claims to record sales of $1.2bn. MerchBuy is owned by Rensource, a startup that provides off-grid solar energy to businesses (including small retailers) in Nigeria. Founded in 2016, Rensource has raised $27.6m in funding, including a $20m Series A funding round in December 2019. Its business model has also been described as PAAS (power-as-a-service).
Oddly, almost no mention has been made of the connection, except to note that Sabi is co-founded and run by CEO Anu Adasolum, former COO of Rensource, and Ademola Adesina, the founder and CEO of Rensource. Both Adasolum’s and Adesina’s LinkedIn profiles indicate that they started working for Sabi in April 2021.
As far as we can tell, Sabi is a rebranding of a Rensource-owned service called Spaces. On the Sabi site, the link to its app takes the user to the Google Play page for the Spaces app. Spaces describes itself as “a suite of apps that helps merchants in running their daily business activities. These apps include; merchapp, merchbuy, merchlist web platform and the Spaces app. Spaces runs and operates a platform that allows merchants to purchase from distributors over the internet and an adapted partner logistics network.”
The Spaces app has 118 reviews, the first of which was in November 2020. Almost all rate the app as 5/5. Crosschecking names of people giving reviews give people in Nigeria with the same names as a solar engineer and a Nigerian-based content writer. The company’s website, instagram and Twitter profiles look to have been launched in August 2021.
In summary: Sabi is owned and operated by Rensource and may or may not be in the process of spinning out. To the extent that it has operated so far, it looks like it has done so under Rensource-owned platform names. The high number of retailers, if true, will be borrowed from Rensource’s agent and retailer network.
Rensource apparently launched the service as Merchlist, back in April 2020, part of its pivot to being a merchant services provider. Merchlist claimed to connect consumers with retail partners including chains such as Grocery Bazaar, Grand Square and Rx Pharmacy. The Merchlist website does not appear to be operational. In none of its materials does Sabi or Merchlist mention any of the FMCG manufacturers it partners with (competitor TradeDepot references almost 20 core partners). There is no information on how the service works that usually accompany these news releases – do retailers order from manufacturers, distributors or wholesalers? How do they get the products? Who warehouses and delivers them? In which cities does Sabi operate?
Trendtype is extremely skeptical of Sabi’s claims around transaction values and partner retailers. To the extent they could be true, we think they conflate activities undertaken across all of Rensource’s different branches. To put this in context, none of the major online ordering platforms Trendtype tracks in Africa have yet claimed to have more than 70,000 partner retailers. Sabi is claiming to have more than double that number transacting on its platform, while operating in stealth mode.
