Nairobi — Kenyan-based cloud kitchen Kune foods has shut down operations barely a year after its launch with its founder and Chief Executive Officer Robin Reecht blaming the "economic downturn and investment markets tightening up."

The startup which was founded in 202o will lay off 90 employees and lose more than 6,000 individual customers and 100 corporate customers it said it had acquired over time.

The bank had raised USD1 million in pre-seed funding a year ago and earlier this year, it said it was raising USD3.5 million from local and international investors to ramp up production.

But Reecht says that selling the food at USD3 per meal wasn't enough to sustain its growth.

"We were unable to raise our next round. Coupled with rising food costs deteriorating our margins, we just couldn't keep going.

Besides being a tech platform, the startup had a factory, a kitchen studio, 7 distribution hubs, 6000 customers, and a team of 90 people.

"Many things could have been done differently, better certainly. The coming months will allow us to reflect on Kune's failure, and I hope to share about it when the time will be right," he said.