THE MOVE
In July 2024, Uncover Skincare — a Nairobi-founded, data-driven skincare brand built for melanin-rich skin — closed an oversubscribed Seed II round of US$1.4 million (KES 180.95 million). The round was co-led by EQ2 Ventures and IgniteXL Ventures, with participation from Chui Ventures, Samata Capital and Altree Capital. It sits on top of a $1 million seed raised in 2022 and a $100,000 pre-seed in 2021, taking the company's disclosed lifetime funding to roughly $2.5 million. Demand reportedly exceeded the allocation to the point that a secondary transaction was arranged to accommodate investors. This is the specific, real, recent bet this dossier assesses.
The stated use of proceeds is threefold: build out a proprietary technology and personalisation platform, expand the product portfolio, and enter new markets. Uncover was founded in 2021 by Sneha Mehta (CEO), Jade Oyateru (COO) and Catherine Lee. Its core proposition fuses Korean beauty (K-Beauty) formulation science with African botanical ingredients, aimed squarely at melanated skin that the mainstream industry has historically underserved. The brand describes itself, in Mehta's words, as "much more than a skincare brand" and "a movement to prioritise women of colour who have been sidelined by the beauty industry."
The expansion vector is what makes this a global-retail story rather than a local one. Uncover already operates across Kenya and Nigeria and has recently pushed into Uganda and Ghana, with the Democratic Republic of Congo named as a next African market. Critically, the company has told reporters it is actively exploring North American partnerships to reach diaspora consumers, framing the raise as the fuel for a diaspora-to-global leg. COO Jade Oyateru described the capital as the means to "unlock our next stage of growth, expand our product portfolio, enhance our technology." The move is therefore two bets stacked on one balance sheet: deepen pan-African distribution, and simultaneously test whether an African-built melanin-first brand can travel to Western diaspora shelves.
Distribution today is omnichannel but modest in absolute terms. Alongside its e-commerce platforms, Uncover has secured retail partnerships with chains such as Goodlife and Medplus pharmacies in Kenya and Nigeria, and reports a digital community exceeding 200,000 women across its markets and the diaspora. The headline traction figure — a tenfold revenue increase over the preceding 24 months, driven substantially by its Nigeria entry — is the number the round was underwritten against. What Uncover has not yet done, on the public record, is convert diaspora demand into a named Western retail listing. That gap is the fulcrum of this assessment.