From Wreckage To Revival: iProcure’s Resurrected Tech Platform Secures SunCulture Investment.

In the scorched landscape of African B2B e-commerce—where once-celebrated unicorn contenders now exist only as cautionary tales in investor pitch decks—a phoenix is attempting to rise from particularly notable ashes.

iPOS, the entity formed to acquire the technology assets of Kenya’s defunct agritech iProcure, has secured SunCulture as a strategic minority investor in a deal disclosed this week. The transaction brings together two prominent figures in Kenya’s tech ecosystem: Mahia-John Mahiaini, former chief financial officer of Twiga Foods and now CEO of iPOS, and Samir Ibrahim, CEO of solar irrigation provider SunCulture.

For observers of East Africa’s turbulent startup scene, the symbolism is hard to miss. Mahiaini was CFO at Twiga Foods—itself a cautionary tale of B2B e-commerce ambitions colliding with operational reality—during its expansion phase. Now he’s leading the effort to salvage technology from iProcure, another high-profile casualty of the sector’s systematic challenges. And Ibrahim’s SunCulture, which has navigated its own near-death experiences, is betting capital that this time will be different.

The investment marks a significant vote of confidence in iPOS’s bid to pivot the technology of one of East Africa’s most prominent startup failures into a sustainable, asset-light infrastructure play. Whether that confidence is warranted remains an open question—but in a sector starved of positive narratives, even the possibility of resurrection qualifies as news.

The iProcure Collapse: A Brief Autopsy

To understand what iPOS is attempting, it’s essential to revisit what killed iProcure in the first place.

Founded in 2013 by Stefanie Manthey and Patrick Wamukoya, iProcure positioned itself as a digital supply chain platform connecting smallholder farmers to agricultural inputs—seeds, fertilizers, pesticides—and market access. The company raised over $14 million across multiple rounds from prominent investors, including Accion Venture Lab, Gray Matters Capital, and DOB Equity.

At its peak, iProcure claimed to serve over 100,000 farmers across Kenya and Uganda, operating both a digital marketplace and a network of physical “iStores” where farmers could access products and agronomic advice. The model combined e-commerce, last-mile logistics, embedded credit, and value-added services—a complexity that would ultimately prove fatal.

The unraveling began in early 2023, accelerating through 2024 as the company struggled with three interconnected challenges:

Capital Intensity: Operating inventory-heavy B2B e-commerce in agricultural markets requires massive working capital. Products must be purchased upfront, stored in warehouses, and transported to rural last-mile locations—all before revenue arrives. With growth-stage venture capital evaporating after 2022’s global downturn, iProcure couldn’t secure the follow-on funding needed to sustain operations.

Unit Economics Failure: Despite years of operation, iProcure never achieved profitable unit economics on core transactions. Thin agricultural margins, high logistics costs, credit default rates, and customer acquisition expenses created a business where every incremental sale worsened financial health rather than improving it.

Market Structure Mismatch: The fragmented nature of African agricultural input markets—dominated by informal traders, credit relationships, and localized trust networks—proved resistant to digital disintermediation. Farmers preferred established relationships with local agrodealers who extended flexible credit and personalized service over app-based transactions from distant startups.

By late 2024, iProcure had ceased meaningful operations. Employees were laid off, stores shuttered, and investor hopes of recovering capital looked increasingly unrealistic. The technology platform—comprising ordering systems, logistics software, inventory management, and farmer databases—appeared destined to become digital wreckage.

Enter Mahiaini: The Resurrection Architect

This is where Mahia-John Mahiaini enters the story, bringing both unique credibility and hard-won skepticism about B2B e-commerce business models.

Mahiaini’s tenure as CFO at Twiga Foods—East Africa’s most prominent food distribution startup—provided front-row exposure to both the promise and pathology of B2B e-commerce. Twiga raised over $150 million, achieved a $200 million valuation, and was widely celebrated as Kenya’s next unicorn. Then it collapsed under the weight of inventory costs, credit losses, and unsustainable economics, eventually pivoting to a dramatically scaled-back operation.

“Mahia-John saw the movie before,” notes a former Twiga executive who requested anonymity. “He knows exactly where these models break—carrying inventory, extending credit, subsidizing logistics. The question was whether he could design around those failure modes rather than repeat them.”

Rather than attempting to relaunch iProcure as a going concern, Mahiaini structured iPOS as a technology infrastructure company. The core thesis: instead of owning inventory, extending credit, or operating logistics, iPOS would provide software-as-a-service tools enabling existing agricultural supply chain participants—agrodealers, cooperatives, input manufacturers—to digitize their operations.

The model shift is profound. Where iProcure tried to replace existing supply chains with a startup-operated alternative, iPOS aims to augment and digitize existing chains. Where iProcure competed with agrodealers, iPOS partners with them. Where iProcure’s revenue came from product margins, iPOS would earn software licensing fees, transaction commissions, and data services revenue.

“We’re not in the business of moving bags of fertilizer,” Mahiaini said in a rare interview with Kenyan tech publication Disrupt Africa in October 2025. “We’re in the business of making it easier for the people who are already successfully moving bags of fertilizer to do so more efficiently and profitably.”

Why SunCulture Sees Opportunity

SunCulture’s decision to invest in iPOS reflects both strategic alignment and Samir Ibrahim’s contrarian bet on African agricultural technology—albeit with a radically different approach than the failed models of 2020-2023.

Founded in 2012, SunCulture manufactures and distributes solar-powered irrigation systems and agricultural technology to smallholder farmers across Kenya, with expansion into other East African markets. The company has raised over $40 million from investors including EDF Group, Acumen Fund, and Gray Matters Capital, and has deployed over 30,000 solar irrigation systems to date.

Unlike iProcure, SunCulture survived the 2023-2024 shakeout because it avoided three fatal errors that killed competitors:

Asset-Light Customer Acquisition: Rather than subsidizing customer acquisition through venture capital, SunCulture relied on commission-based sales agents and partnerships with NGOs, government programs, and agricultural cooperatives that provided built-in customer pipelines.

Embedded Financing Through Partners: Instead of extending credit from its own balance sheet—a guaranteed path to insolvency given farmer credit risk—SunCulture structured financing partnerships with commercial banks, microfinance institutions, and “pay-as-you-go” models where equipment serves as collateral.

High-Margin Products: Solar irrigation systems command significantly higher margins than agricultural inputs like seeds or fertilizer. This unit economics advantage provided financial cushion to weather market turbulence.

For Ibrahim, investing in iPOS offers two strategic benefits:

Data and Distribution Synergies: iPOS’s technology platform connects to thousands of farmers and agrodealers—potential customers for SunCulture’s irrigation products. Access to farmer data, purchasing patterns, and creditworthiness assessments could dramatically reduce SunCulture’s customer acquisition costs.

Technology Infrastructure: Rather than building proprietary digital supply chain software, SunCulture can potentially leverage iPOS’s existing platforms for order management, logistics coordination, and payment processing—reducing its own technology development costs.

“SunCulture sees an opportunity to acquire technology capabilities and market access at a significantly discounted price compared to building or buying at market rates,” notes Dr. Bitange Ndemo, former Permanent Secretary of Kenya’s Ministry of Information and Communication and current associate professor at the University of Nairobi Business School. “It’s a calculated bet that iProcure’s technology still has value, even if iProcure’s business model didn’t.”

The Strategic Minority Stake Structure

While financial terms of SunCulture’s investment remain undisclosed, the structure as a “strategic minority investor” carries important implications.

Minority Position: SunCulture is not taking control of iPOS or assuming operational responsibility. This limits downside exposure while preserving optionality for deeper integration if the model proves viable.

Strategic vs. Financial: The “strategic” designation signals that value flows both directions—SunCulture gains technology and distribution access, while iPOS gains capital, a credible reference customer, and validation from a scaled agricultural technology company.

Flexibility for Additional Investors: A minority stake leaves room for other strategic or financial investors to join subsequent rounds, spreading risk and bringing additional expertise or market access.

The structure reflects hard-won wisdom from Africa’s venture capital ecosystem: avoid overcommitting to unproven turnarounds, maintain optionality, and structure deals where strategic value (partnerships, data, distribution) provides upside even if financial returns disappoint.

The Asset-Light Pivot: Learning From Failure

iPOS’s pivot toward asset-light infrastructure represents a fundamental reassessment of what works in African B2B e-commerce—and what reliably fails.

What Consistently Failed (2020-2024):

• Inventory-Heavy Models: Buying, warehousing, and distributing physical goods consumed massive capital, created working capital mismatches, and exposed startups to commodity price risk, spoilage, and theft.
• Balance Sheet Credit: Extending trade credit to small businesses and farmers generated unsustainable default rates, typically 15-30% in agricultural sectors, destroying unit economics.
• Subsidized Logistics: Operating fleets of trucks or motorcycle couriers to reach rural last-mile locations proved prohibitively expensive. Venture capital masked these costs until funding dried up.
• Disintermediation Plays: Attempts to “cut out middlemen” and directly connect producers to consumers underestimated the legitimate value informal traders provide—inventory risk management, flexible credit, localized knowledge, and trust.

What Appears More Durable:

• Software-as-a-Service to Incumbents: Rather than replacing existing supply chains, provide digital tools (inventory management, order processing, payments) that make incumbents more efficient.
• Transaction Facilitation vs. Principal Risk: Earn commissions on transactions others execute, rather than taking inventory or credit risk onto your own balance sheet.
• Embedded Finance Partnerships: Structure financing through banks and MFIs that understand agricultural credit risk, rather than extending credit directly.
• Data Monetization: Aggregate transaction data, farmer profiles, and purchasing patterns to create analytics products for input manufacturers, financial institutions, and development organizations.

iPOS’s model leans heavily into these lessons. By licensing technology to agrodealers rather than competing with them, facilitating transactions rather than owning inventory, and partnering for credit rather than extending it, the company avoids the capital sinks and operational complexity that killed predecessors.

“The graveyard of African B2B e-commerce is filled with startups that tried to do too much—be the marketplace, the logistics provider, the financier, the data platform, all simultaneously,” observes Kola Aina, general partner at Ventures Platform in Lagos. “The survivors are the ones that picked one thing, did it exceptionally well, and partnered for everything else.”

Cautious Optimism—With Caveats

The SunCulture investment has generated cautious optimism within Kenya’s tech ecosystem, but significant skepticism remains about whether asset-light B2B e-commerce models can achieve venture-scale returns.

The Bull Case:

• Proven Technology: iPOS acquired technology that iProcure spent years and millions developing, debugging, and scaling to serve 100,000+ farmers. Starting with working software is vastly preferable to building from scratch.
• Experienced Leadership: Mahiaini’s financial discipline and operational experience at Twiga—particularly his front-row view of what doesn’t work—provides credibility that first-time founders lack.
• Market Timing: Many agrodealers and cooperatives that were skeptical of digital tools in 2019 have now seen competitors gain efficiency through technology. Willingness to adopt may be higher.
• Lower Capital Requirements: Asset-light SaaS models require far less capital to scale than inventory-heavy predecessors. This improves unit economics and reduces dependency on venture funding.

The Bear Case:

• Technology Value Decay: iProcure’s systems were built for an inventory-heavy, credit-extending business model. Adapting them for pure SaaS may require substantial redevelopment, eroding the “acquired working technology” advantage.
• Willingness to Pay: Agrodealers and small agricultural businesses operate on thin margins and may resist paying software subscription fees, particularly if alternatives (spreadsheets, WhatsApp) remain free.
• Saturated Market: Multiple B2B ag-tech platforms already serve Kenya’s market—including Twiga (in reduced form), KOKO Networks, Apollo Agriculture, and others. Customer acquisition could be expensive.
• Talent Retention: iProcure’s collapse scattered experienced team members across the ecosystem. Rebuilding institutional knowledge and product development capability will take time.
• Exit Uncertainty: Even if iPOS achieves profitability, the addressable market may be too small to generate venture-scale returns. Investors’ appetite for “singles and doubles” has diminished considerably post-2022.

“Success for iPOS might look like $3-5 million in annual revenue, 30-40% margins, and steady profitability serving a few thousand small businesses,” notes Maya Horgan Famodu, founder of Ingressive Capital. “That’s a very nice business—but it’s not a venture outcome. The question is whether investors, founders, and employees are aligned around that reality.”

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The Broader Context: African B2B E-Commerce’s Reckoning

The iPOS story unfolds against the backdrop of African B2B e-commerce’s systematic failure over the past 18 months—a collapse so comprehensive that the sector has become investor shorthand for “what not to fund.”

The Casualty List:

• Twiga Foods (Kenya): Raised $150M+, achieved $200M valuation, then imploded. Now operates a dramatically scaled-back shadow of its former self.
• MarketForce (Kenya): Raised $42M, served 270,000+ retailers, shut down in August 2023 after failing to raise Series B.
• Wabi (Egypt): Raised $100M+, operated across Egypt and Morocco, laid off 150+ staff and suspended operations in 2024.
• Alerzo (Nigeria): Raised $27M, shut down in March 2024 citing “macroeconomic headwinds.”
• TradeDepot (Nigeria): Raised $110M across multiple rounds, underwent severe restructuring including mass layoffs.
• Wasoko/MaxAB (Pan-Africa/Egypt): Merged entity raised $200M+ combined, has struggled with unit economics and underwent multiple layoffs. Survival uncertain.

The pattern is consistent: startups raise tens of millions, subsidize rapid growth through venture capital, achieve impressive GMV and customer metrics, then collapse when follow-on funding disappears and sustainable unit economics never materialize.

“The entire sector was built on a house of cards,” says a senior partner at a pan-African VC firm who requested anonymity. “Everyone knew the unit economics didn’t work. The bet was that scale would fix it—that with enough volume, efficiencies would emerge. They didn’t. And now we’re left with wreckage.”

The sector’s failure has been so comprehensive that many African venture capitalists have written off B2B e-commerce entirely, redirecting capital toward fintech, healthtech, and other verticals perceived as less capital-intensive and operationally complex.

Can Infrastructure Models Succeed Where Marketplaces Failed?

iPOS’s pivot from marketplace to infrastructure raises a fundamental question: is the problem specific to inventory-heavy B2B e-commerce, or is it structural to digitizing fragmented, low-margin African supply chains regardless of approach?

The Infrastructure Thesis:

Proponents argue that enabling infrastructure—software tools, payment rails, logistics coordination platforms, data analytics—can succeed even where principal-risk marketplaces failed, because:

• Capital Efficiency: SaaS requires far less working capital than inventory. Monthly recurring revenue from software subscriptions is more predictable than transaction-dependent GMV.
• Scalability: Software scales with minimal marginal costs once developed. Adding the 10,000th customer costs nearly nothing, unlike adding the 10,000th ton of inventory.
• Defensibility: Switching costs for mission-critical software (inventory management, payment processing) are higher than switching costs for suppliers, creating stickier customer relationships.
• Margin Structure: Software gross margins of 60-80% dwarf marketplace take rates of 5-15%, providing more financial cushion.

The Skeptics’ Response:

Critics counter that infrastructure models face their own systemic challenges in African markets:

• Willingness to Pay: Small businesses accustomed to free tools (WhatsApp, spreadsheets) resist paying subscription fees, particularly for software that doesn’t directly generate revenue.
• Smaller TAM: Even if iPOS captures 10% of Kenya’s agrodealers, that’s perhaps 2,000-3,000 customers. At $50-200/month, that’s $1.2-7.2M in annual revenue—respectable but not venture-scale.
• Integration Complexity: Legacy systems, limited digital literacy, and poor internet connectivity make enterprise software adoption difficult in African SME contexts.
• Competition from Free Alternatives: WhatsApp Business, Google Sheets, and rudimentary CRM tools provide “good enough” solutions for most small businesses.

“The infrastructure thesis sounds elegant in pitch decks,” notes Omobola Johnson, former Nigerian Minister of Communication Technology and current senior partner at TLcom Capital. “But monetizing it in markets where customers are price-sensitive, digitally unsophisticated, and have access to free alternatives is extraordinarily difficult.”

What Success Would Look Like

For iPOS to validate its model and provide returns to SunCulture and other investors, several milestones must be achieved:

Near-Term (6-12 Months):

• Onboard 100-200 agrodealers as paying customers for core software platform
• Demonstrate product-market fit through 60%+ retention rates and net revenue retention above 100%
• Establish partnerships with 2-3 input manufacturers or financial institutions for embedded services
• Achieve breakeven operations on existing capital without requiring immediate follow-on funding

Medium-Term (12-24 Months):

• Scale to 500-1,000 paying customers across Kenya and at least one additional market (Uganda or Tanzania)
• Reach $1-2M in annual recurring revenue with 40%+ gross margins
• Launch data analytics or embedded finance products generating incremental revenue streams
• Demonstrate clear path to $5M+ revenue within 3 years

Long-Term (24-36 Months):

• Achieve $3-5M in ARR with demonstrated unit economics supporting venture-scale returns
• Expand to 3-4 East African markets with localized product offerings
• Build strategic partnerships with major agricultural input manufacturers (e.g., Yara, OCP Africa, Bayer)
• Position for Series A fundraising or strategic acquisition by agricultural multinational

Even achieving these milestones leaves open questions about ultimate outcomes. Is this a $50M acquisition by a strategic buyer seeking African distribution? A $10M-20M M&A exit to a larger SaaS platform? A steady, profitable business generating modest returns? Or another failure?

“The bar for success has been dramatically lowered,” observes Bankole Oluwafemi, co-founder of Ventures Platform. “Three years ago, anything short of $100M revenue and a unicorn trajectory was considered underperformance. Now, if iPOS achieves sustained profitability at $5M revenue, that’s genuinely impressive. Expectations have been recalibrated.”

Implications For The Ecosystem

The iPOS-SunCulture deal carries implications beyond the two companies directly involved:

For Failed Startup Assets: The transaction demonstrates that intellectual property, technology platforms, and customer data from failed startups retain value if properly restructured. This could encourage more “acquihires” and asset sales rather than total liquidations, potentially returning some capital to investors and founders.

For Founder Recycling: Mahiaini’s journey from Twiga CFO to iPOS CEO illustrates the ecosystem’s maturation—experienced operators learning from failures and applying those lessons to next-generation ventures. This “founder recycling” is critical for building institutional knowledge.

For Strategic Investors: SunCulture’s minority stake model—limited downside, strategic upside through partnerships—may become more common than traditional venture rounds. Cash-strapped startups may increasingly turn to strategic corporates for capital.

For Venture Capitalists: The deal reinforces that African B2B e-commerce requires radically different models than initially envisioned. Asset-light infrastructure plays may attract renewed interest, but expectations around scale, timeline, and returns have fundamentally shifted.

For Agri-Tech Broadly: If iPOS succeeds, it validates that agricultural technology can work in Africa—but only with business models aligned to market realities rather than Silicon Valley playbooks. This could unlock renewed investment, albeit with far more scrutiny.

The Road Ahead

For now, iPOS remains in proof-of-concept phase. SunCulture’s investment provides runway and credibility, but the hard work of customer acquisition, product development, and unit economics validation lies ahead.

Mahiaini and Ibrahim are attempting something genuinely difficult: salvaging value from spectacular failure and building a sustainable business in a sector that has destroyed billions in investor capital. The odds are not favorable. But in an ecosystem desperate for positive narratives and paths forward, even the attempt matters.

“Success here looks different than it did three years ago,” reflects Mahiaini in his Disrupt Africa interview. “We’re not chasing unicorn valuations or hyper-growth. We’re building a profitable, sustainable business that solves real problems for customers who will pay for the solutions. If that’s not sexy enough for some investors, so be it.”

For African tech, which has spent the past decade chasing “sexy” at the expense of sustainable, Mahiaini’s pragmatism may represent a more durable path forward. Whether it proves commercially viable remains to be seen. But in the wreckage of iProcure, Twiga, MarketForce, and countless others, the appearance of green shoots—however tentative—is something the ecosystem desperately needs.

The phoenix may yet rise. Or it may join its predecessors in the graveyard of African B2B e-commerce. Either way, the iPOS experiment will provide lessons—about what can be salvaged from failure, how to structure resurrection attempts, and whether asset-light infrastructure models can succeed where inventory-heavy marketplaces catastrophically failed.

For investors, founders, and observers of African tech, those lessons may prove more valuable than any individual company’s success or failure.