Swoop raises $7.3 million seed for African super app, food delivery first

Swoop, an Eswatini food delivery startup, has raised $7.3 million in seed funding to support its expansion into Nigeria as it pursues its super-app model outside its home country for the first time.

The round, backed by Silicon Valley investors including Long Journey, Variant, Version One, Dune Ventures, Soma Capital, and Zero Knowledge Ventures, will fund the buildout of a consumer platform starting with food delivery. Walter Kortschak and Base Capital, the only African investor named in the round, also participated.

Swoop’s seed raise is one of the largest seed rounds disclosed by an African consumer startup, and nearly as large as the $9 million Series A that Chowdeck closed in August 2025 after four years of operations and expansion into 11 cities.

“It’s super hard to build a super app, and our investors recognise that. They recognise that you need a bit of runway and foundation to be able to do the things that you need to do operationally,” said Demola Adesina, Swoop’s Nigerian country manager.

Swoop believes Nigeria’s food delivery market—valued at $1.1 billion in 2025—has more room to grow than its competitors suggest. According to Nigerian payments processor Paystack, which processes payments for Swoop and all the major food delivery companies in Nigeria, the sector grew by 187% between 2021 and 2024.

Nigeria’s ratio of food ordered for delivery to food consumed outside the home is far lower in Nigeria than in peer markets in Africa or Southeast Asia, and the real opportunity lies in converting non-consumers rather than poaching existing users, Adesina said.

“We think that the food delivery space in Nigeria is still significantly under-penetrated. Our target is not existing consumption but the users that are not consuming,” he said. “We are not getting into a war with other platforms. We are trying to grow the pie.”

Swoop, formerly known as Thumo, launched in Eswatini in August 2025 and acquired 6,000 users in its first month, according to co-founder Aubrey Niederhoffer. Edwin Ruiz, another co-founder, told local press in Eswatini that the goal was to build a pan-African super app combining food, groceries, and rides.

The startup is starting with food delivery in Yaba, a neighbourhood in Lagos Mainland, already served by Chowdeck, Glovo, and FoodCourt, its competitors in Nigeria’s growing food delivery sector.

“There is more confidence regarding regulatory risk, and international investors committing capital to us proves that,” Adesina said. “Beyond that, I am passionate about Nigerians. There is better market education and more interest in positively changing consumer habits. We think this is the perfect time to build on that.”

Swoop says it uses a network of independent riders rather than an employed fleet, generating revenue through commissions on restaurant sales and customer handling fees. While riders retain 100% of delivery fees, the startup applies a 7% service charge to fund operations.

Adesina declined to disclose the startup’s fee structure or unit economics, saying current fees are low because the priority is user acquisition. He added that the company is not interested in a price war.

“Our approach is to find the reason why some people are not consuming [through food delivery] and to make them consumers. We are not just slashing prices and getting into a price war,” he said.

Picking food delivery as the first vertical in a multi-product approach allows Swoop to acquire daily customers that create a habit with the app, a proven but costly growth engine for its super-app ambitions. OPay, one of Nigeria’s largest fintechs, initially bundled food delivery and ride-hailing with its payments wallet to drive daily usage for its wallet before shutting down the non-fintech products.

“Food delivery is a metric for how developed the ecosystem is. If you get food delivery right, you can essentially be the node of the ecosystem,” Adesina said.

“We believe that if we have a group of customers around that node, we are able to translate that into other areas and verticals,” he shared, adding that Swoop will let its users determine the next vertical to launch.

Food delivery in Nigeria is a tightly contested sector that has claimed many startups and local divisions of well-funded international companies like HelloFood, Jumia Food, Bolt Food, and OFood, as the unit economics rarely work at scale. According to Jumia’s 2022 financial report, its food delivery arm lost $1.80 for every $10 it made.

The logistics and marketing costs exceeded the revenue made from the order, which meant Jumia was essentially paying customers and restaurants to use the service. These unit economics are a primary reason why Jumia eventually shuttered its food delivery business in late 2023.

Despite Jumia Food’s shutdown, Chowdeck, the largest food delivery platform in Nigeria, serves two million registered users with over 20,000 riders operating across 14 cities in Nigeria and Ghana while maintaining profitability, a rare feat for young food delivery startups.

Swoop’s strategy will require acquiring high-volume, lower-income customers on the outskirts of Lagos and in smaller cities, where local restaurants and quick-service outlets dominate, if it is to create a new set of food delivery consumers.

Whether Swoop becomes a success depends on three things: what it builds after food delivery and in what order, a monetisation strategy that ensures it is profitable, and whether it can scale beyond Yaba and Lagos before it runs out of cash.