Sky.Garden founding team (James Mwai, Christian Grubak, Isaac Hunja, Martin Majlund, Daniel Maison, Morten Grubak)

Sky.Garden, a new Kenyan-based e-commerce website has raised $1.2 million (Ksh 120 million) in seed funding. The company which launched less than a year ago was founded by a trio of Kenyans, Isaac Hunja, James Mwai and Daniel Maison who acts as CEO. Two more partners from Denmark, Christian Grubak and Martin Majlund, complete the founders list.
Sky.Garden, a peer-to-peer platform, joins a highly competitive space which already includes Jumia, OLX and Kilimall but, the company is determined to place itself as Kenya's preferred online sales channel. This newly acquired funding, led by Jesper Drescher of Norway-based investment firm TRK Group, puts them well on their way.
CEO, Daniel Maison said on the seed funding, "We are thrilled to be receiving the continued support and recognition for our platform from such influential investors, especially in the highly competitive market that we are in. The positive impact we have had on small and medium sized businesses across the region encourages us to continue to build the very best e-commerce platform our market has seen."
Sky.Garden already has over 3,000 unique shop owners and 23,000 unique products being traded across 30 different categories including Clothes & Footwear, Electronics, Home, Furniture & Garden and Health & Beauty. The Sky.Garden platform offers the ability to open a free web shop in minutes and has attracted businesses in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu and Nyeri.
There are no registration fees or monthly fees. The user is equipped with a web shop URL which they can share to their customer base on existing social media. The sellers are charged an 8% flat rate per transaction. Sky.Garden handles the customer service, delivery and mobile money payments on behalf of the trader.