After weeks of back-and-forth, I finally pinned down a meeting with Nimrod Kibua at CcHub’s iHub, now housed in the Jahazi building in Nairobi’s Lavington area, a leafy suburb that’s quietly become a hive for tech meetups and low-key founder sessions.
We caught up over light banter. Kibua, who was among the early crop of founders incubated at iHub in the 2010s, recalled the energy back then. Nairobi’s tech scene was still raw, crowded with builders chasing product-market fit and soaking up mentorship from the city’s few but active incubation hubs. iHub was one of the main ones.
A decade on, and after cycling through multiple ideas, Kibua, a trained programmer, landed on Asta Marketplace, a business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce platform. It launched in 2019, went quiet in 2020 during the pandemic, then resurfaced in 2022, listing at least 3,000 vendors.
Why bring back an e-commerce platform in a market already saturated with them?
Platform uniqueness
“Most of our vendors are already running their own ecommerce platforms,” he told me. It makes sense. In Kenya, it’s common for businesses to juggle multiple online storefronts—Instagram, Facebook, X, sometimes even a basic website. “So we wanted to see how we could help these vendors scale what they already have,” he said.
Rather than replacing existing storefronts, Asta wants to plug into what’s already working and help sellers reach more customers. It’s a subtle but critical difference.
But Asta isn’t just B2B. It has a B2C layer as well, where customers can shop like on any other platform, but also, crucially, become vendors themselves.
To do that, they have to rent a digital shelf and go through a verification process before they’re allowed to resell. It’s not an open floodgate, but more curated. That model feels close to what Alibaba does with its verified sellers on Alibaba.com, where businesses must go through checks and often pay a subscription to list as “gold suppliers.” The twist here is that Asta Marketplace lowers the barrier by targeting everyday users who might not own a business but want to participate in online retail. It’s a layered approach to e-commerce, one that blends formality with informal hustle, something that mirrors how trade actually works in Kenya.
It doesn’t stop at e-commerce. In 2022, Asta Marketplace introduced the Asta Funding Hub, a service designed to help vendors access funding from angel investors, venture capital firms, and other sources. The Hub was co-founded with Dennis Guantai, a former financial analyst at Wasoko, the Kenyan B2B platform that later merged with Egypt’s MaxAB.
This Hub is one of Asta’s core revenue streams.
How it works
Vendors interested in raising capital sign up for online training that covers the basics: how to develop a term sheet, create a pitch deck, and present to potential investors. The sessions are delivered virtually. Kibua told me that there’s a plan to add physical sessions in the future.
Pricing is tiered. Individual vendors pay KES 10,000 ($80) for three 45-minute sessions. Group training, targeted at multiple vendors from the same company, costs KES 5,000 ($40) per person. It’s a structure that appears designed to encourage group participation while offering some cost relief.
For vendors looking for more tailored support, Asta Marketplace offers advanced sessions that can cost up to KES 70,000 ($538) per engagement. These are typically for businesses that need hands-on help with areas like developing full business plans, detailed financial modelling, or refining investment strategies.
Once trained, vendors can use the Hub’s network to connect with funders and pitch for investment. In theory, it’s a pipeline from skill-building to fundraising. In practice, the numbers paint a more complex picture.
Over 800 vendors have completed the programme since 2022. However, just 23 have successfully raised funding, which is less than 3%.
Kibua doesn’t shy away from the challenges. “In most cases, the success rate is very low on account of more rigorous checks by potential funders. Some businesses may not pose value that an investor is looking for, so they are mostly kicked out,” he said.
It’s unclear whether this points to limitations in the training, gaps in deal-readiness, or investor appetite. But the ambition is clear. Asta trained 230 vendors in the first quarter of 2025 and is aiming to train 2,000 more in its next cohort, set for June.
One of Asta Hub’s funding partners is Marquee Equity, a UK-based firm that connects businesses with potential investors. For vendors who go through Asta’s training and then secure funding via Marquee’s network, the firm takes a 10% success fee from the funds raised. From that fee, Asta earns a 10% share, essentially a commission on a commission.
This model, however, isn’t replicated across Asta’s other investor partnerships.
In most cases, once vendors complete training, Asta steps back. The assumption is that the vendor now has enough knowledge to navigate funding processes independently. If they do go on to raise capital, through personal networks, other platforms, or direct investor relationships, Asta Funding Hub doesn’t take a cut.
Whether this signals a hands-off approach or reflects a belief in vendor autonomy is unclear. Kibua insists the vendors remain within Asta’s support ecosystem and can reach out for help when needed. But the structure suggests a light-touch model that provides training, creates connections, and then lets vendors test the waters on their own. It’s a bet that knowledge and exposure are enough, at least in most cases.
Asta’s layered model—part marketplace, part funding support, part capacity builder—attempts to mirror the messiness of how commerce actually works in Kenya. It doesn’t promise scale from day one or guarantee investor cheques. But it does make room for vendors who are often in between, half-formal, half-hustle, and largely ignored by larger platforms.
Whether that model is sustainable or scalable is still unclear. What’s clear is that Asta isn’t trying to replace how things work, but to quietly insert itself into the middle of it.
