Chowdeck raises $9 million to fuel Nigeria, Ghana expansion

Chowdeck, a Y Combinator-backed on-demand delivery platform, has secured $9 million in a Series A funding to expand into more cities across Nigeria and Ghana. The raise comes just a month after the company’s successful expansion into Ghana, signalling strong investor confidence in its hyper-local strategy for the African market.

The round was led by pan-African investor Novastar Ventures, with significant participation from existing and new backers including Y Combinator, AAIC Investment, Rebel Fund, GFR Fund, Kaleo, and HoaQ. The capital injection is earmarked for deepening the company’s footprint across Western Africa—Nigeria and Ghana, and for optimising its delivery infrastructure for groceries, pharmaceuticals, and local market goods.

First-of-Its-Kind Series A for Nigerian Food Delivery

The fundraise marks a significant milestone in a challenging venture capital climate. Globally, reported Series A rounds have seen a 9.6% decline, and within Africa, only a handful of tech firms like Rivy, SeamlessHR, and Raenest have recently reached this stage. Chowdeck’s achievement makes it the first Nigerian food delivery platform to announce a Series A, placing it among a select group of Nigerian startups like Flutterwave and Moniepoint that have matured beyond early-stage funding.

“We are still scratching the surface. We have seen a change in consumer behaviour in the last two years, said Femi Aluko, CEO and co-founder of Chowdeck, on a call with Condia. “We are essentially optimising for an entire generation of people who don’t know where physical markets are. They shop online.”

With a user base exceeding 1.5 million customers and a network of over 20,000 riders in 11 cities, Chowdeck’s competitive edge lies in its deep localisation.

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“In Nigeria before Chowdeck, the only things you could get delivered to you were things like Burger, pizza, shawarma,” Aluko explained. “Chowdeck changed the game, delivering local options like Amala, ewedu, and gbegiri.”

This focus on local cuisine was instrumental to its rapid traction in Ghana, where it recorded 1,300 deliveries within its first three months—a milestone that took 11 months to achieve in Nigeria. The company further solidified its Ghanaian presence with the strategic hire of Henry Whyte, the former country lead for Bolt Food Ghana. In 2024, the value of meals delivered via the Chowdeck platform grew more than sixfold compared to the previous year. The company claimed to have already exceeded last year’s total and is firmly on track for another record-breaking year in 2025.

Solving Delivery Bottlenecks

As the company scales, it faces the mathematical challenge of maintaining service quality. “When that number moved to 10,000 [daily deliveries], you still have the same 90% [success rate], but 10% of 10,000 means 1,000 customers didn’t get their food on time,” Aluko noted.

The new funding will be critical in tackling this challenge. Chowdeck aims to reduce its average delivery turnaround to under 20 minutes and is seeking to improve upon its current success rate, where 97% of orders are completed within 30 minutes. A key part of this operational enhancement appears to be the recent acquisition of Mira, an order and inventory management platform, intended to streamline processes where, as Aluko states, “every second now counts.”