The problem
Moving goods across Nigeria runs on phone calls and roadside brokers: manufacturers cannot find dependable trucks, truck owners burn fuel on empty return trips, and drivers — mostly unbanked — wait days or weeks for multinationals to pay.
How it works
Kobo360’s app matches cargo owners with truck owners Uber-style, with real-time tracking from pickup to digital proof of delivery. Drivers receive half or more of the trip fee upfront and the rest on delivery; its Payfasta embedded-finance platform and credit wallets bridge the gap left by slow-paying manufacturers, cutting the collection process by 12 days. The company has described its longer-term ambition as a Global Logistics Operating System combining every activity in the African supply chain.
Pain points
Ghost trucks and broker markups, no credit history for drivers who lack bank accounts, and cash conversion cycles at big shippers that starve small transporters of working capital.
Business model
Margin on every load moved through the platform, plus trip-level insurance and financing products and payment flows that monetise the float between shipper payment and driver payout.
Challenges
The pandemic crushed volumes just as the company chased a $100M Series B; unable to anchor the equity round, it survived on a bridge from existing investors and executive pay cuts before closing a FEDA-led Series B. Unit economics only turned when it stopped absorbing insurance and collection costs and passed them to transporters.
Funding
- Raised: $20M Series A equity led by Goldman Sachs plus $10M in working-capital financing from Nigerian commercial banks (TechCrunch, Sep 2019), to upgrade the platform and expand beyond Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, and Kenya.
- Later: a Series B led by the Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA), Afreximbank’s equity arm, with TLcom Capital, IFC, and Goldman Sachs participating (TechCrunch, Sep 2022).
- Valuation: MISSING.
Latest — August 2023
On 12 August 2023 co-founder and CEO Obi Ozor was sworn in as Enugu State’s commissioner of transport, bringing six years of logistics experience into public office — a move widely read as tech talent entering government.