With the new investment, Jumba plans to scale across the Kenyan market, taking advantage of the expanding construction industry, as it acquires more customers.

Investors who participated in the round were Enza Capital, which led its $1 million pre-seed round last year, Foundamental, Seedstars International Ventures, Logos Ventures, SpeedInvest, First Check Africa and Alumni Angel Network.

Jumba simplifies the purchase and supply chain between construction companies and customers. This helps companies make more supplies in a day, enable end users never run out of stock and provide the opportunity to track spends.

The startup was founded last year by Kagure Wamunyu, also the CEO, and Miano Njoka, the CTO, to decentralize the distribution of manufacturing necessities throughout the country. Jumba initially focused on serving retailers, but then shifted target to developers.

These retailers and developers can access construction materials through Jumba’s one-stop website where sourcing and logistics are managed, documents and invoices are provided and negotiations for affordability are done by Jumba.

Through partnerships with banks, the construction tech company provides buy-now-pay-later services to retailers, while plans for developer’s long-term credit are still cooking.

FoondaMate was launched in August 2020 by Dacod Magagula and Tao Boyle. By leveraging the social networking platforms, WhatsApp and Facebook, the startup is solving the challenge of high data cost by providing everything needed by students on its single platform, cancelling out the need to use so much data searching online.

With service offerings reaching over 30 countries including Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, and Indonesia where it recently launched, FoondaMate makes it possible for users to download and practice past questions, get Wikipedia articles in text, get definitions of words and solve mathematical equations anytime.

The seed round, bringing the resources needed for FoondaMate’s speedy acceleration, was led by UK-based venture capital firm, LocalGlobe, and included participation from Emerge Education, Odunayo Eweniyi via FirstCheckAfrica, Iyin Aboyeji via Future Africa, and LoftyInc, alongside angels from Luno — Marcus Swanepoel and Justworks — Isaac Oates.

Targeting high-school students, the startup looks to accelerate its growth in emerging markets where Whatsapp is highly utilized and has seamless access. FoondaMate affirms to have built a learning chatbot which is easy to use, affordable and acts as an organized alternative to using search engines for study. Educators also use FoondaMate’s integrated resources to set and post homework and to share other learning materials with students.

Across the countries where the FoondaMate platform is being used, more than 400,000 students are enjoying its services which come in over 10 languages. The startup is continually working hard to bolster operations as it’s currently building to localize its learning materials so as to accommodate learners in more countries and enhance the growth of its platform to reach more than 50 million users.