Moroccan foodtech Terraa bags $1.5 million in Series A funding

Terraa, a Moroccan B2B tech-enabled food distribution platform, has raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding in a round led by FoodLabs, a European early-stage VC investor and venture studio for food, sustainability, and health.

The fresh produce market in Morocco is still very fragmented and highly dominated by traditional intermediaries, throughout the value chains from the farmer to the end consumers. That's why Terraa is leveraging the use of technology to bring change to the fresh food supply chain in Morocco.

Founded by Youssef Benkirane and Benoit De Vigne last year, the startup sources fresh produce directly from farmers, and stores them in collection facilities to fulfil later online orders by retailers, restaurants, and other resellers.

The company says the operation effectively helps farmers cut back on post-harvest losses and provide end customers easy access to quality fresh produce at a consistent and competitively priced rate.

Terraa says it will prioritize the funding to strengthen its logistics infrastructure as well as expand across Moroccan cities. The startup plans to build some collection centres in the coming months to store the produce that is collected from the farmers in all the major agricultural cities of Morocco for distribution to the end customers.

With local expansion still its priority, Terra confirmed is looking to explore and replicate this model in new markets in the future, specifically, a big country in Africa where there’s a huge demand, to kick off its expansion in the continent.

Other participants in the round were UM6P Ventures, Outlierz Ventures, Musha Ventures, and Africa-centric DFS Lab.