Amidst news of global funding winter, Kenyan B2C marketplace Sky.Garden is facing reportedly closure.
TechCrunch reports that the Amazon-like start-up may be facing closure after its CEO, Martin Majlund, sent termination notices to employees earlier this month and revealed that the company was running out of money and would close down on October 16.
This news is coming three months after another Kenyan start-up foodtech Kune shut down due to similar reasons.
In his response to news publication of the impending shutdown, the Sky-Garden CEO admitted that the start-up is facing a funding crisis and noted that it is looking for a solution.
“Sky.Garden Limited is still solvent and operations are still ongoing. We are in dialogue with potential investors and acquirers but as we have to be diligent about doing things the right way, we chose on September 16th to give our staff 30 days’ notice while working on our opportunities,” said Maljund.
Since its kickoff in 2017, the startup has received about $6.1 million in funding, per Crunchbase. Its last raise was a $4 million Series A round led by SANAD Fund in June 2021.
“Rising prices, inflation, war in Ukraine and increased interest rates have made the venture capital space very challenging, especially being a B2C e-commerce business,” the CEO said. “We have therefore for a while been in deep M&A conversations. But we are not the only ones being hurt by the macro-economic contractions which have had a negative implication on the timeline of these conversations leaving us in the above-mentioned situation.”
Several African startups have been affected by the global funding winter that has seen startups like Edukoya, Swvl, Vezeeta, and Sendy lay off some of their staff in order to preserve whatever funding they already have.
