A lot has been going on at Twiga, the Kenyan tech startup that was very successful at its start and appealed to investors who pumped billions of Kenyan shillings into it. Twiga promised and continues to promise one thing: that it will make access to food to Kenyans as easy and seamless as possible using its tech in the supply chain. The promise continued to appeal to the state, which then loaned the company KES 300 million to achieve its goals through the Huslter Fund program.
It has been reported that the company has laid off a third of its permanent workforce. With 850 employees, under 300 will be let go in the next few days. The layoffs will affect all of Twiga’s markets, including Uganda.
The said laid off adds to the 211 employees the company fired earlier. This brings the total redundancies to a little over 500 or thereabouts.
Challenging market in Western Kenya
Talking of Uganda, Twiga launched in the country sometime towards the end of 2022. Over the weekend, it was rumoured that Twiga had left the market – but that is not true. It has basically restructured how it operates in Western Kenya, which also serves as supply chain link to the Ugandan market. “Twiga continues to operate across its market footprint across Kenya, and Uganda has only moved to halt the Western Kenya Region operations temporarily. The temporary halt will allow Twiga to review and re-design an improved route-to-market model in Western Kenya regions such as Kisumu, Kisii, and Eldoret, which a single central depot may ultimately serve once the process is complete,” a statement from Twiga read.
It added, “Kampala, Uganda Depot continues to operate, as does our Taita-Taveta farm operations. We have been undertaking the business transformation initiatives to make Twiga Group more resilient and effective in the marketplace.”
In additional clarification, Twiga said, “There is no closure of business, our temporary halt in Western Kenya operations allows for streamlining and reviewing our supply chain model and ensuring profitable operations as part of the corporate transformation. Under this transformation, the company has been on a path to becoming a lean, agile, cost-efficient organization, undertaking several interventions to adopt and sustain the business during these tough economic times. As part of these efficiency interventions, the company has reviewed its operating model and cost management to ensure its organizational structure is fit for purpose.”
This effectively clears up what has been happening at Twiga in the recent past, and it basically paints a picture of a struggling startup ecosystem as investors put a leash on which places to invest.
