Weeks after Copia’s collapse, co-founder, top executives quietly registered new startup

One month after Kenya’s Copia Global collapsed in May 2024 under the weight of operational debt and failure to raise fresh funding, its top executives quietly returned to the e-commerce scene with a new startup.

Tim Steel, Copia’s former chief executive; Michael King, its former chief technology officer; and co-founder and executive chairperson Tracey Turner have launched Stahili, a new e-commerce platform that promises cashback, discounts, and mobile data rewards for user engagement. Corporate filings seen by TechCabal show the company was registered in June 2024, barely a month after Copia was placed under administration.

The company is already operational in Kenya, with a live website offering deals on its products. The launch comes at a sensitive time for Copia’s creditors, employees, and investors, many of whom are still struggling with the aftermath of one of Kenya’s most high-profile startup collapses.

Filings at the Business Registration Service (BRS) show Stahili is wholly owned by Copia Holding Company, a US-registered entity linked to Turner and previously associated with the now-defunct Copia Global. While Copia shut down its operations in Kenya and Uganda by September 2024, the holding company appears to have survived and is now the corporate parent of the new platform.

Turner and Steel did not respond to requests for comment at the time of publication.

In January 2025, Turner started Olverra, a US-registered entity that helps African artisans sell handmade products abroad. Her LinkedIn profile shows Turner serves as the executive chair, and Vijay Otieno, a Kenyan data engineer, is the CEO.

According to a short description on Turner’s LinkedIn page, Stahili draws inspiration from early Groupon in the US and Coupang in South Korea, promising to empower lower-income African consumers by rewarding them for participating in surveys and offering feedback to brands.

Founded in 2012, Copia had built its model on serving rural and peri-urban households using an agent-driven last-mile delivery system. For years, it was heralded as one of Africa’s most promising tech-for-good stories. Backed by DOB Equity, Goodwell Investments, Enza Capital, Lightrock, and the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), the startup raised over $123 million (KES15.8 billion) across seven rounds.

Its final raise, a $20 million injection in December 2023, came just months before the company’s abrupt collapse. Despite the deep investor pool, Copia never turned a profit in its 12-year existence. Its strategy—typical of venture-backed startups—focused on growth before profitability, betting that rapid market capture would eventually justify the burn.

Despite its lofty ambitions, Copia never turned a profit. By early 2024, operational costs had spiralled, margins were under pressure, and the company failed to secure a sustainable lifeline after its final $20 million funding round in December 2023. In May 2024, the company filed for voluntary administration. It was wound down by September, with administrators moving to liquidate its remaining assets to pay creditors.

It is still unclear whether Stahili will seek new funding and from which investors. If it is Copia’s spiritual successor, it faces the same challenge that collapsed its predecessor: delivering value to rural consumers at scale, without burning through capital faster than revenues can catch up.

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