Oja, the UK’s first ethnic digital supermarket focused on African and Caribbean goods, is announcing today it has raised a pre-seed extension led by LocalGlobe, with participation from footballing icon Raheem Sterling. The new funding follows market-leading momentum for the startup, which has recently expanded across London and the West Midlands, and seen 11x year-on-year growth.
Founded in 2020 by Mariam Jimoh, a second-generation immigrant from Nigeria, Oja believes that no matter where people live they should be able to access products from any and every culture. Sitting at the intersection of grocery, culture and community, Oja taps into the needs of users and truly understands the emotional bond and importance of cultural food. Through its website, Oja diversifies the grocery industry by putting ethnic products just a few clicks away. Customers from a wide, and growing range of cultures can order from handpicked suppliers and have orders shipped from Oja’s warehouses and dark stores to their homes the next day.
Once-stop culture shop
Since launch, Oja has expanded beyond a single London postcode to cover the entirety of Greater London and more recently opened orders in Birmingham. One day a month, Oja additionally ships nationwide. Oja has also expanded its product offering, catering to cultures from Nigeria, Somalia, North and East Africa, Caribbean and surrounding islands. It offers a Halal range, now sells beauty and haircare products, and is set to expand into household items. In this way, Oja is looking to build the one-stop-shop related to culture and establish itself as the leading ethnic-integrated e-commerce platform.
Oja’s growth is significant in its own right but is particularly notable against the wider grocery delivery landscape. Thanks to its strong focus on community, its mission and by maintaining profitability through steady and consistent growth, Oja has bucked the wider trends seen in the on-demand grocery sector, with order volumes growing around 40% month on month and an average basket size of over £60. This is largely in part because of the very genuine and far-reaching problem Oja addresses.
For decades, the traditional grocery industry has failed to cater for the increasingly broad range of cultures in the UK. World food aisles in supermarkets have remained largely unchanged over the past 30 years and lack the authenticity and variety to suit the wide and growing range of multicultural needs. Even as the wider sector exploded in the wake of Covid, communities across the country remained excluded and underserved. This is a problem that Mariam herself experienced and which Raheem Sterling acutely understands as a Jamaican-born Brit living in a country where access to specific food, as well as health and beauty products from individual cultures depends on where you live.
Mariam Jimoh, CEO and founder of Oja, said: “Our recent growth, the renewed backing of LocalGlobe and Raheem’s support truly speaks to the power of community, which is at the heart of my mission with Oja. Within this community, we share a love of food. We feel the intrinsic link between who we are and how we relate to our cultures through food, and we share the frustration over its access. This authenticity shines through and we’re thrilled that Raheem not only recognised the problem we’re trying to solve but wants to join us in solving it for even more people.”
Raheem Sterling, investor, said: “There is such a natural connection with Oja for me. I can get my favourite home comforts, like Biggas and plantain chips, and having access to these products at short notice is amazing! I am sure that the wider African and Caribbean communities will appreciate this too, and this is a key reason why I joined this investment round; I am excited to play a part in something with both potential and purpose”.
The funding will be used to further Oja’s expansion into new cultures and regions over the coming months, as well as its B2B offering.
