Kenyan e-commerce startup Chpter raises $1.2 million in pre-seed round

Chpter was accepted into two accelerator programs before closing this pre-seed deal.

Chpter, a Kenyan e-commerce startup launched by co-founders of YC-backed Marketforce, has raised $1.2 million in a pre-seed round and will use the new funding to improve its technology stack and expand into Egypt and Nigeria.

Founded in 2022 by Tesh Mbaabu, Mesongo Sibuti, Kuria Kevin and Mark Kiarie, Chpter helps businesses convert social media from a marketing channel to a sales platform with chat, order, and payment tools. The company charges a monthly subscription and earns a transaction fee for payments processed on its platform. Some of its clients include insurer Britam, shoe store Kicks Kenya, and e-commerce platform Phoneplace. The company operates in Kenya and South Africa.

“We are investing in our tech stack to offer an end-to-end product, connecting the APIs from social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Instagram with popular e-commerce and customer relationship management systems like Shopify and Woocommerce,” Tesh Mbaabu, Chpter’s co-founder and CEO told TechCabal.

Pani, an Africa-focused investment firm co-founded by Cellulant’s former CEO, Ken Njoroge, led the funding round. Other participants include Plesion Capital, Techstars, Norrsken, Renew Capital, and ViKtoria Ventures, and angel investors, including Nala founder and CEO Benjamin Fernandes and Workpay co-founders Paul Kimani and Jackson Kibigo.

The fundraising is a vote of confidence from investors in the young startup. It was founded while its two co-founders were running Marketforce, a YC-backed Kenyan e-commerce platform once valued at over $100 million.

Some of Chpter’s investors had previously invested in Marketforce, although Mbaabu declined to share further details. Chpter operates independently of Marketforce.

“Chpter was and is not under the MarketForce umbrella. It is going to continue operating independently. However, MF is a shareholder in it,” Mbaabu told TechCabal in May 2024.

Chpter’s acceptance into the Norrsken Accelerator in 2023 and the Safaricom Spark Accelerator in May 2024 may have positioned it as a key startup in conversational commerce.

Norrsken Accelerator investment remains undisclosed. In May 2024, Safaricom Spark Accelerator invested between $150,000 and $500,000 in Chpter, one person familiar with the matter said. The telco did not participate in the pre-seed round.