Grace Ashiru
Terraa, a Moroccan B2B food distribution platform that uses technology, has raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding. FoodLabs, an early-stage European VC investor and venture studio for food, sustainability, and health, led the round.
In Morocco, the fresh food market is still fragmented and dominated by traditional middlemen, from farmers to final consumers. Because of this, Terraa is using technology to change the way fresh food is delivered in Morocco.
Youssef Benkirane and Benoit De Vigne started the company last year. It gets its fresh food directly from farmers and stores it in warehouses until retailers, restaurants, and other resellers place online orders.
The company says that the operation helps farmers cut down on post-harvest losses and makes it easy for customers to get fresh, high-quality food at a consistent and competitive price.
Terraa says it will put most of the money toward improving its logistics infrastructure and expanding to more cities in Morocco.
In the coming months, the new business plans to build some collection centers to store the food bought from farmers in all of Morocco’s major agricultural cities and then send it to the end customers.
With local growth still its top priority, Terra confirmed that it wants to look into and copy this model in new markets in the future. To start its expansion in Africa, it wants to start in a big country with a lot of demand.
UM6P Ventures, Outlierz Ventures, Musha Ventures, and DFS Lab, which focuses on Africa, were also part of the round.
