Why Twiga Foods Failed: Unit Economics | Startup Autopsy
€50M
Raised
9y
Time to collapse
€150M
Peak valuation
// startup autopsy
Twiga Foods
Kenya farm-to-retailer distribution startup backed by IFC and Creadev that raised $50M and shed over half its workforce in 2022-2023 as perishable logistics economics proved fatal.
Evaluating only Twiga Foods’s profile at its peak — without knowing the outcome — the model ranked Unit economics as the #1 likely cause. That’s exactly how it died.
Key Events Timeline
FOUNDING
Twiga Foods founded
DOWN ROUND
Down round or bridge financing
SHUTDOWN
Mass Layoff Spiral: Twiga Foods ceases operations
Full Analysis
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Documented cause
Twiga Foods connected Kenyan smallholder farmers directly to informal urban retailers, eliminating middlemen in the fresh produce supply chain. Raised $50M from IFC, Creadev, and Jumo. The company built warehouses and refrigerated distribution networks across Nairobi. The economics of handling perishable fresh produce at small volumes — 30% spoilage rates, extremely thin margins, and informal retailer credit demands — proved impossible to make work at scale. Massive layoffs across operations, technology, and field teams in 2022-2023 marked the effective end of the original model.
Lesson
“Farm-to-informal-retailer fresh produce distribution has never been made to work profitably at scale anywhere in Africa — the combination of perishability, informal credit, and low basket sizes creates a unit economics problem that cannot be engineered away.”