GT Flow, Formerly Twiga Foods One, Enters Administration as Creditors Get 30 Days to File Claims

Twiga Foods, once one of Kenya's most celebrated startups, is now in administration.

The company behind one of Kenya's biggest startup stories has been placed under administration, with Mohamed Mohamed appointed to take control of the business and assess what can be recovered. The move follows years of financial pressure and comes after the company transitioned to the GT Flow identity.

Twiga built its reputation on a straightforward idea: connect farmers with informal retailers and use technology and logistics to make the food supply chain more efficient. The company grew quickly, attracted major international investors and became one of the most recognisable names in Kenya's startup scene.

But food distribution is an expensive business to scale. More orders require more inventory, transport, warehouses, staff and working capital. Fuel still has to be paid for, goods still have to move and retailers still have to pay. Every step adds another cost to a business that was already operating on relatively thin margins.

Venture capital helped Twiga finance that expansion. As long as new funding was available, the company could keep investing in the network and absorb costs ahead of revenue. When fundraising became more difficult, the same infrastructure that had enabled its growth became a financial burden.

Twiga responded with layoffs and restructuring, cutting costs as the company tried to reduce its cash requirements. But there is a limit to how much an asset-heavy business can shrink before it starts losing the scale that made the model viable in the first place.

Now an administrator is in charge. Administration does not mean liquidation, and Mohamed Mohamed will first assess the company's finances, obligations and assets before determining whether the business can be restructured or sold. The directors no longer control those decisions.

Twiga still has assets that took years to build. Its supplier and retailer relationships, logistics operations, technology and operational knowledge could be useful to another company willing to take them on. A buyer could acquire some of those pieces, restructure the business and continue the operation under a different ownership model.

Without a buyer, the process takes a different direction. Creditors submit their claims, the administrator works through the company's obligations and assets are dealt with according to the administration process.

That creditor list could reveal just how much of the business was financed by obligations that Twiga could no longer carry. Suppliers, lenders, employees and other creditors may all have claims against a company that once raised substantial amounts of venture capital.

Twiga's original problem has not disappeared. Moving food efficiently between farmers and retailers remains a difficult business, particularly when the operation has to carry inventory, transport and working-capital costs at scale. The technology can make the system more efficient, but it cannot remove the cost of physically moving the food.

Twiga spent years building that system with venture capital. The administration process will now establish whether the system itself still has enough value to survive.

The next stage will come down to the administrator's assessment, the claims from creditors and whether a buyer emerges for any part of the business. If one does, some of Twiga's infrastructure could continue under new ownership. If not, the company will be left to settle its obligations with whatever value remains.