Twiga Foods partners with global cloud communication firm

Infobip, a global cloud communication company for businesses, has provided Twiga Foods Kenya with access to its AI-powered chatbot-building platform, Answers, via WhatsApp. The move has enabled the agri-tech start-up to significantly improve the onboarding process for vendors who fulfill the minimum Know Your Customer (KYC) requirement on the Twiga Foods platform.

Twiga Foods, which was established in 2014 to reduce fragmentation in the produce market, runs a mobile-based Business-to-Business (B2B) food supply platform that supplies fresh fruits and vegetables from farmers in rural Kenya to small- and medium-sized vendors, outlets, and kiosks across the country.

The company has been using field marketing agents to sign up vendors for its platform, but it realized that it needed a more efficient and cost-effective way to activate vendors.

By using Infobip's Answers chatbot solution, Twiga Foods has been able to drive meaningful, personalized, and scalable engagement with existing and new vendors across the country.

According to Stellah Njeru, Product Manager, Social Commerce at Twiga Foods Kenya, the company has significantly improved the onboarding process, with 40 per cent of vendors across the country being fully registered and KYC'd via Twiggy on WhatsApp within less than 3 minutes.

For the development team at Twiga, Infobip's Answers chatbot building solution has been a game-changer. It saved them numerous hours as it's easy to build on, supports integrations with their internal backend services, and can be securely deployed to multiple social channels as they scale.

With the company now being available and able to support customers round the clock through WhatsApp, Twiga Foods' customer satisfaction rating and customer retention have improved.

"Chatbot solutions are fundamentally altering the way many businesses operate since AI-driven bots can engage with customers more effectively and efficiently while also giving an organisation a greater understanding of its clients," said Emma Mugo at Infobip.

"We are transforming African retail with an alternative system that eliminates inefficiencies and generates the same results as the modernisation of retail in more developed markets."

Overall, the use of Infobip's Answers chatbot solution via WhatsApp has helped Twiga Foods to be more innovative in the African retail market, by embracing independent retailers and giving them better access to high-quality foods, produce, and home goods using the latest technology.