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The startup plans to provide these services beyond its current three markets by expanding to Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon by the end of this year, after closing $2.5 million in pre-series A funding from 500 Global, VestedWorld, and Loyal VC. Dakayi-Kamga said that this has helped the startup to optimize its technology to ensure that retailers source goods from the closest distributors. The B2B ecommerce platform is set to introduce financing in July, a launch that follows a pilot program involving 200 retailers that the startup carried out last year. The startup plans to charge an interest based on product margins. Since launch, the startup claims to have grown its customer base and revenues by 10 and 12 times, respectively. The startup anticipates greater growth especially after entering more countries and rolling out its buy now pay later (BNPL) product, as it taps the retail market in sub-Saharan, which was valued at $380 billion in 2021, contributing 20-50% of the region’s GDP on average.“We want to simplify access to goods and services for the retailers and for the end consumer because we see the merchant as an agent able to make access to goods and services easier. The asset-light model means Betastore does not have any capital and labor intensive assets like warehouses or its own fleet of vehicles for delivery. On average, a retailer using Betastore makes 4.4 orders per month.
