Kenya’s online e-commerce platform Sky-Garden has sent termination notices to staff ahead of a planned shutdown later this week a few months after Kune Foods called it a day. “Five years after launching, Kenyan e-commerce platform Sky.Garden, may have to stop operations following a failed funding round,” Nairobi based startup accelerator Baobab Network has announced.

The company CEO, Martin Majlund, told Baobab that termination notices had been given to staff with a potential closure date of October 16, 2022.

“This could, in part, be a result of the economic downturn which has led other Kenyan technology companies to make cuts, including transport and logistics start-up, Sendy,” Baobab said.

Sky.Garden launched in 2017 and was founded by Christian Grubak, Christian Mathiassen, Daniel Maison, James Mwai, and Martin Majlund, providing a mobile-first SaaS eCommerce platform for African retailers. This will see investors lose hundreds of millions of Kenya shillings in both seed round and Series A round.

Sky.Garden raised  Sh120 million seed funding round in 2018, and it took on a further Sh400 million in capital in 2021 via a Series A round featuring SANAD Fund for MSME, Aavishkaar, UNCOVERED FUND and KSK Angel Fund, the latter founded by Japanese former AC Milan footballer Keisuke Honda.