Twiga Foods to receive Ksh.300M from Hustler Fund at 8% annual interest rate

Suppliers and customers of Kenyan e-commerce and food distribution platform Twiga Foods will benefit from Ksh.300 million Hustler Fund loans at lower interest rates to grow their businesses.

President William Ruto on Monday said the firm’s 140,000 suppliers will access loans from the soon-to-be-launched fund at an interest rate of 8 per cent instead of 1 per cent per day.

"The 300 million that you lend to your 140,000 suppliers and customers across Kenya. We are going to make that amount of money available to you so that they can be able to borrow at lower interest rates and hopefully increase their earnings,” Ruto said during an opening ceremony for a Twiga Foods distribution facility at Tatu City in Ruiru, Kiambu County.

The president directed Cooperatives Cabinet Secretary Simon Chelugui to ensure that the company's suppliers access the Fund at lower rates when it is launched on Thursday this week.

“CS Chelugui make sure that the customers of Twiga have access to Hustler Fund and instead of them borrowing at 1 per cent per day, they should be able to borrow at 8 per cent per year,” said Ruto.

Twiga uses technology to aggregate demand and streamline logistics in the distribution of farm produce such as fruits and vegetables to small-scale vendors in city estates, helping make products more affordable and increasing sales for vendors.

Founded in 2014, the agri-tech company boasts of 700 employees and has a network of over 8,000 farmers.

It serves about 33,000 vendors every month, with an average of seven orders per week per vendor, and also operates in Uasin Gishu, Embu, Meru, Kirinyaga, Machakos, Nakuru, and Kiambu counties.

The company was recently featured on TIME Magazine’s 2022 list of ‘100 most influential companies’.