The Kenya-based e-commerce start-up ShopZetu has lined up $1 million in pre-seed funding.

The concept for the corporate was created in 2019 and the corporate was launched two years later by founders Marvin Kiragu and Wandia Gichuru. ShopZetu offers fashion, footwear, beauty and accessories from an array of brands for ladies, men and kids. The extensive assortment features global, in addition to African-owned brands. Its recent capital infusion was led by Chui Ventures, which supports tech-driven start-ups across Africa which are being led by local founders.

Launch Africa, a Pan-African VC fund that goals to assist close the funding gap within the seed and pre-Series A investment landscape in Africa, also participated, as did Roselake Ventures and Logos Ventures and angel investors including Kendall Tang, chief executive officer of RT Knits; Ben Munoz, cofounder and CEO of Nadine West; Sumit Bhasin, senior vice chairman of world innovation and product development at Estée Lauder Inc.; Patricia Ithau CEO of WPP-Scangroup, and Peter Njonjo, cofounder and CEO of Twiga Foods.

ShopZetu strives to have 100,000 customers by 2024 in comparison with the present base of 30,000, in response to Kiragu, who serves as CEO. “We consider there may be a medium-term market opportunity for 10 million customers — lower than 1 percent of the overall African population, which translates to a $1 billion revenue opportunity, assuming average annual spend of $100,” he said via email Monday.

Noting how every region of the world has a dominant fashion and lifestyle platform that coexists with leading general marketplaces reminiscent of Amazon, he named examples like Trendyol in Turkey, an organization that Alibaba acquired a stake in five years ago; Myntra in India, which was acquired by the Walmart-owned Flipkart; the Amazon-owned Shopbop within the U.S., and the Noon AD Holdings-owned Namshi within the Middle East.

The platform offers one-stop shopping in Africa’s fragmented retail sector, which incorporates many small brands catering to shoppers in stalls and thru social media. With currently greater than 300 vendors, ShopZetu provides a centralized ecommerce platform for the assorted vendors, in addition to much-needed services for some like content creation, digital marketing, warehousing and last-mile delivery.

ShopZetu claims to have seen a greater than 400 percent increase in monthly orders since January 2021. The corporate is alleged to have sold greater than 100,000 products and has served 30,000-plus customers. In a press release, Chui Ventures’ managing partner Joyce-Ann Wainaina praised ShopZetu’s “vision to remodel Africa’s fashion e-commerce landscape.”

With its pre-seed funding, ShopZetu plans to scale up its customer acquisition in Kenya, bolster its vendor base to 1,000 brands and expand into the sweetness and residential décor categories. The corporate can be looking into securing partnerships with international fashion brands which are keen to seek out local distribution without opening freestanding stores. On one other front, ShopZetu plans to pilot regional delivery services in Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda.

ShopZetu’s CEO Kiragu predicted in a press release that the long run of e-commerce in Africa can be “driven by content, community and hyper-personalization through recent advances in artificial intelligence.”

To attempt to appeal to more customers, ShopZetu recently joined forces with Safari to list on the M-PESA Super App, which offers users fingerprint and facial recognition security and transaction authentication, detailed usage statements and an easy-to-use and fun design.

Internet buyers can browse the offerings by such categories as body fit, “budget friendly,” gender, “recent in” and other expected ones like footwear or accessories, ShopZetu became a part of the Endeavor network in January.