Coordinating
Africa's Last Mile

Pre-Seed Investment Presentation

jon@pallitech.com

The Context

$100M moves through East Africa's last mile every single day.

Thousands of trucks, tuk-tuks, and bicycles. Millions of neighborhood shops. 80% of consumer goods reach people through this network. Real businesses, real people, real money.

And yet, businesses in this supply chain fight every day to survive.

Palli team member loading delivery vehicle at a distribution depot

The Problem

The problem isn't capital. It isn't payments. It's that nobody can see what's happening.

Suppliers go blind the moment a truck leaves the depot.

Agents start from scratch at every stop.

Retailers wait and guess.

Operations nobody can see are operations nobody can manage.

Over $500 million has been spent trying to solve this. Most of it is gone.

MarketForce $42.5M raised (YC-backed)

Shut down 2024. Absorbed margin risk in commodity distribution. As volume scaled, unit economics collapsed.

Twiga Foods $180M+ raised (Goldman Sachs, IFC)

Owned the farms, warehouses, fleet. Every asset became a target. Every failure hit the balance sheet. Restructuring.

Copia $123M raised (Goodwell, Perivoli)

Shut down 2024. Owned warehouses, fleet, 50,000 agents. Liquidated after failing to reach profitability at scale.

In most markets, scale generates efficiency. Here, it multiplies exposure: more trucks, more invisible transactions, more risk concentrated on a single balance sheet.

The Approach

Informal retail is not a bug in the system. It's the system.

The companies that failed treated it as something to replace, formalize, or control.

Palli is built to coordinate it.

The Platform

One platform. Three users. One coordinated network.

Retailer

Predictable service, secured orders

Alerts when supply is nearby. Orders secured through voice or text. No app. English or local language.

Agent

Confirmed orders, not cold stops

Route and orders waiting at the start of the day. Earnings tied to completions. Customer relationships protected.

Supplier

Visibility and control

Orders, vehicle movement, and delivery status in real time. Fulfillment tracked per customer.

Visibility is the byproduct of coordination, not built from compliance.

No trucks.
No warehouses.
No inventory.

Physical risk stays with the suppliers who already own it. Management stays with those on the ground.

What holds the system together is not ownership. It's information.

Early Evidence

One partner. Three weeks.

363
Retailers onboarded
Faster stops
15 min → 5 min
Daily throughput

230 retailers with repeat orders. Agent-led onboarding and adoption.

Every transaction is a record. Every record is an asset no one else has.

Order details dashboard

Google has roads. Palli has what moves on them.

Business Model

Today, suppliers pay to coordinate. Next, manufacturers pay to see and reach.

Today · Coordination

Service fee per completed order, paid by suppliers.

The supplier's cost is proportional to their success. No delivery, no fee.

Next · Visibility & Reach

Manufacturers pay to see the last mile. And reach into it.

What's selling, where, to whom. Promotions that land directly with retailers, not absorbed by middlemen.

Market Opportunity

Start where the model works, then expand the network.

Today
$4B
Uganda Beverage
Next
$40B
East Africa FMCG
At Scale
$100B+
Local Market Services

The revenue opportunity is serving the transactions already happening, currently invisible and uncoordinated.

Our Journey

Every lesson came from the ground.

Q4 2023 — FMCG Credit

$400K issued and returned to local wholesalers. More capital without visibility amplified fragility.

Capital increased risk
Q3 2024 — Payments Network

$200K/month in daily transactions, 12-hour payback. Faster money didn't expose what was happening underneath.

Volume obscured visibility
Q1 2025 — Vertical Expansion

$700K/month with regional distributors. Confirmed the business itself doesn't reliably profit.

Distribution is unprofitable
Q3 2025 — Route Mapping

100+ daily transactions per route. Leakage, theft, and fraud everywhere, and for the first time, visible.

Coordination is the product

14 partners · 80 vehicles · 5,000+ outlets onboarded to route mapping and fleet tracking. The install base the platform now builds from.

The Team

Making local distribution visible, reliable, and profitable.

Jonathan Brown and Francis Byobudde

Jonathan Brown

CEO

10 years with small business owners across Africa. Head of Product, Navio. First software PM, Counsyl (acq. Myriad). Founder, Axena ($1M+ revenue, Asia Pacific).

Francis Byobudde

CTO

Built a savings co-op with $1M+ in assets. Head of Systems Engineering, PSI. Founder, Nymbow Uganda.

Isabel

Isabel

Customer Success

Francis

Francis

Software Engineering

Noble

Noble

Software Engineering

Ken

Ken

Software Engineering

Jon

Jon

Product & Engineering

Noah

Noah

Operations

Ken

Ken

Field Sales

The Ask

$350,000 to prove
coordination at scale.

6 months

2,500 active retailers

Transaction fee revenue live

12 months

Delivery compliance above 90%

Multiple suppliers per market

18 months

Expansion beyond Kampala

First paid manufacturer engagement

At 2,500 retailers across multiple suppliers, the dataset tells manufacturers something they've never known: exactly what's happening at the last mile.

Jon Brown

jon@pallitech.com

+256 783 672 647 · +1 951 572 2554

A reliable network carries better goods. Not just cheaper ones.