Kenyan based e-commerce company Sky.Garden, launched 9 months ago, has raised $1.2 million in its opening round.

The start-up plans to launch a next-generation merchant platform later this year, to bring disruptive e-commerce management to their rapidly growing merchant base.

SkyGarden claims to have registered over 3000 unique sellers who now have access to their very own Sky.Garden Web Shops.

As reported by CIO East Africa, the investment was led by Jesper Drescher, TRK Group based in Norway, The Katapult Accelerator Follow-up Fund, and a syndicate of Danish Business Angels led by Futuristic.vc.

Sky.Garden CEO, Daniel Maison is quoted saying, "we are thrilled to be receiving the continued support and recognition for our platform from such influential investors, especially in the highly competitive market that we are in.

"The positive impact we have had on small and medium-sized businesses across the region encourages us to continue to build the very best eCommerce platform our market has seen."

The firm says its web shop owners, and 23,000+ unique products uploaded, span across over 30 different categories.

"The Sky.Garden platform offers the ability to open a free web shop in minutes and has attracted large and small businesses in Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Nyeri and many more counties across the country."

Web shop owners operate their inventory autonomously using the Sky.Garden Merchant App downloadable from the Android Play store.

The start-up's funding follows suit to others grabbing global attention, including Kenyan taxi-hailing company Mondo Ride, which recently raised US$5 million for Africa expansion. Troels Andersen, CEO and Co-founder recently revealed that Mondo Ride will raise more funds for the expansion drive after it managed to add US$2 million to its coffers last week.

Globa investors are increasingly showing interest. In 2018 alone, a number of accelerators and investment funds announced budgets to fund tech start-ups in the continent, including Norway's Pangea which has set up a US$500,000 investment fund for ten African start-ups.

Another is Google, which recently announced the launch of its Launchpad Accelerator Africa which aims to support African entrepreneurs in building successful technology companies and products.