Former Copia CEO Timothy Steel, former CTO Michael King, and Tracey Turner, Copia co-founder, have made a strong comeback with a new e-commerce firm named Stahili. Mr. Steel leads the company as CEO, King as CTO, and Ms Turner as chairperson.
Stahili is an e-commerce platform that rewards users with discounts, cashbacks, and mobile data for completing surveys and providing product feedback. Having been incorporated in June 2024, Stahili’s inception was inspired by early business frameworks of Groupon in the US and Coupang in South Korea – two platforms that grew by helping merchants reach customers looking for the best deals.
“Similar to Groupon’s success in the USA and Coupang’s success in South Korea, Stahili is an e-commerce company that gives middle and lower-income Africans a voice and empowers them with purchasing opportunities that make their lives better every day,” Ms Turner via LinkedIn.
Stahili is already operational, and it’s targeting Kenyan consumers. Recent information shows that the three executives assumed their duties at Stahili in August and September, the same time when Copia was being liquidated.
Established in 2012, Copia anchored its business framework around serving middle and low-income households through digital ordering and last-mile logistics. The company experienced rapid growth bolstered by its agent-based distribution approach and in-house delivery network.
In 2013, Copia received initial funding from the Savannah fund, followed by over Sh15.8 billion from global investors across seven different funding stages. The firm lastly raised $20 million in December 2023, a few months before its collapse. The investors included DOB Equity, Goodwell Investments, the US Development Finance Corporation (DFC), Lightrock, and Enza Capital, among others.
Even with the heavy capital investment, Copia never made a profit in its 12 years of operation. Copia stopped operations in Uganda in 2023 and liquidated its assets in September 2024 due to the company’s high operating costs, narrow profit margins, and difficulties raising finance as it extended its activities outside Kenyan boundaries to Uganda.
Analysts link the failure of top startups in Kenya to more systemic problems.
“What we’ve seen in our research is financial misappropriation, which means that startups with very good ideas seek funding, but that money is misappropriated in terms of building and scaling that startup to a point where it can be stable and self-finance,” said Kagwe Mutahi, CEO of Arica Insights Consulting.
Mutahi went on and warned against dismissing solely based on past failure. “Just because somebody starts a company and fails doesn’t mean they don’t deserve a second chance. It means they’re wiser for it because there’s something that they learnt.
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