Three years ago, I sat across from Meshack Alloys on my podcast, Pure Digital Passion. Back then, the conversation was about Sendy — a bold attempt to rewire how goods move across Kenya’s and Africa’s fragmented logistics ecosystem. The story was about trucks, warehouses, routing algorithms, and the unglamorous but essential reality of getting physical goods from point A to point B.

Today, Meshack is building something even more foundational. Not logistics. Financial rails.

His new venture, tabb, has just announced its entry into Kenya’s construction and hardware ecosystem through a strategic partnership with Doshi, one of the country’s leading suppliers of steel, electrical, water and hardware products.

If you understand how business actually happens in Kenya’s SME economy, you’ll know this isn’t just another fintech launch. It’s a direct intervention into one of the most stubborn friction points in African commerce: trade credit.

The Everyday Reality: Demand Exists. Cash Doesn’t.

If you spent time with hardware retailers, subcontractors, distributors, or fundis in Nairobi’s industrial areas and the story repeats itself where customers want to buy in bulk, projects are waiting and demand is real but cash flow becomes the bottleneck. 

At the same time, banks find SMEs too costly or risky to serve, suppliers end up acting as informal lenders, and SMEs rely on post-dated cheques and trust-based arrangements. tabb describes this as a three-sided market failure as banks struggle to profitably serve SMEs, suppliers carry credit risk on their balance sheets, anbd SMEs lack affordable, timely working capital. 

This is NOT a theoretical market problem. That’s the daily operating reality of Kenya’s construction supply chain.

tabb’s Core Idea: Don’t Become the Bank. Build the Rails.

Here’s where tabb gets interesting. They are not a lender. Instead, they’re building the infrastructure layer that allows banks to issue revolving credit lines to SMEs, SMEs to spend that credit instantly at approved suppliers, suppliers to get paid immediately and repayment to happen later, over 30–90 days, interest-free. 

Its a closed-loop network where everyone wins.

If you follow global fintech trends, this mirrors how Stripe, Shopify, or Amazon quietly embedded financial services into commerce. tabb is simply applying that logic to Africa’s B2B trade economy — where the opportunity (and pain) is far larger.

What Are The Key Drivers Behind The Doshi Partnership?

Doshi isn’t just a supplier. They sit at the heart of Kenya’s construction and hardware distribution ecosystem. Thousands of SMEs buy stock from them every month — from neighbourhood hardware shops to subcontractors servicing major construction sites. By joining tabb’s network, those SMEs can now apply once for a bank-issued revolving credit line, purchase stock instantly, repay later, and Doshi receives payment immediately.

Doshi’s Director, Hemal, puts it plainly:

“We can now confidently say ‘yes’ to every customer and unlock faster growth right at the point of purchase.”

That single operational change quietly unlocks bulk purchasing power, better stock availability, and faster project execution across the value chain. In this instance, there is no flashy consumer-facing mobile app, no viral marketing and instead there is just an invisible infrastructure quietly improving business velocity.

Starting Where the Pain Is Biggest

tabb is deliberately launching in Africa — where the SME financing gap exceeds $350 billion and post-dated cheques still dominate B2B trade. They’re starting with sectors where working capital pressure is highest: in areas like construction materials, logistics, pharmaceuticals, and retail. Kenya’s hardware and construction ecosystem is therefore the perfect proving ground. If this works here, the model scales across the continent.

Meshack’s Founder Trajectory: Infrastructure At The Core

Looking at Meshacks’s entrepreneurial arc, a pattern is emerging.

Sendy → Logistics rails
Boya → Business banking rails
tabb → Trade-credit rails

Different layers. Same philosophy. Solve systemic infrastructure gaps, not surface symptoms.

His background — from B2B logistics operations to corporate card issuing — gives him a rare vantage point across commerce, payments, and credit. When we spoke years ago, Meshack talked about building for scale, not hacks. tabb feels exactly like that next-scale play.

The Broader Story: The Invisible Systems That Power Growth

Most SMEs won’t know they’re using tabb as they will simply experience stock arriving faster, credit arriving when needed, fewer cash-flow bottlenecks and fewer stalled projects. On the other hand, suppliers will experience faster receivables, lower credit risk and higher transaction volumes. Also, banks will finally see profitable SME lending and embedded risk-managed distribution

Ultimately, the economy quietly becomes more efficient through the impact of infrastructure startups who are quietly reshaping markets behind the scenes, seamlessly and yet doing so profoundly. 

A Full-Circle Moment

Three years ago, Meshack and I discussed how to move goods across Africa more efficiently. Today, he’s solving how to move capital just as efficiently. This is the same same founder building a bigger system and aiming for deeper market impact. The bigger story forward will be if tabb’s network effects take hold, itmay well become one of the most important pieces of financial infrastructure quietly emerging from Africa’s fintech ecosystem.

I suspect we’ll be having another Pure Digital Passion conversation soon — this time about how trade credit became frictionless across Kenyan and African commerce.