105,972 new units sold across 3,350 Stores with Flowcart’s Loyalty Program.

Ajab, operating under Grain Industries Ltd., is one of Kenya's most recognised flour brands. With a product range spanning processed foods, wheat flour, and maize flour, Ajab has built a  wide distribution footprint across the country - supplying wholesalers and distributors who in turn stock retail stores, supermarkets, and hypermarkets from the coast to the lake.

For a brand operating at this scale, the real risk is silent attrition. A retail store that stops stocking Ajab's flour rarely announces it. There is no churn notification, no cancellation, no signal. It is just a gradual, invisible loss of shelf space to a competitor. In a staples category where purchase habits are sticky, winning a store back is far harder than never losing it.

Ajab's challenge was not production. It was not the product. It was retention and the intelligence needed to protect it. Without visibility into which stores were buying, which were slipping, and where a competitor was quietly gaining ground, there was no way to act before the loss became permanent. That changed with Flowcart.

The Challenge

Ajab is one of Kenya's leading flour manufacturers - but for years, their visibility into the market ended at the distributor. Once a bale of flour left the warehouse, it disappeared into a black box.

And this directly affected their retention. With limited visibility into the network, it was difficult for Ajab to know when sales were slipping, which areas to prioritise, and who their top-performing retailers actually were. Without that intelligence, driving retention was guesswork.

They had no way of knowing:

• Which retail stores were actually stocking and selling their product?
• Which regions were over- or under-performing?
• More importantly, Which areas were quietly bleeding sales to a competitor?

The assumption internally was that major cities like Mombasa were driving the bulk of sales. But, it was an assumption. And without accurate data at the store level, Ajab couldn't act on what they didn't know.

But, it was very clear that a competitor was eating into their market share.They were witnessing their significant sales drop for quite some  time.  The problem wasn't just a lack of growth - it was an invisible leak.

The Flowcart Solution

Flowcart turned every bale of flour into a data point.

Inside each bale, Ajab included a unique QR code provided by Flowcart. When a retailer scanned the QR code, they were enrolled in a loyalty programme and rewarded with points:

A simple, tangible incentive for a store owner to register. But behind that simple scan, Flowcart was capturing something far more valuable for Ajab: store-level data at scale.

Every scan gave Ajab:

• The exact location of the store - county, constituency, region, nearest landmark
• Purchase frequency - how often a store was buying
• A live map of retail penetration across Kenya

For the first time, Ajab could see their distribution network not as assumed, but as it actually was.

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The Insight

Flowcart’s QR scan data began painting a picture Ajab had never seen before. For the first time, they could see their distribution network at the store level. Not as reported by distributors, but as it actually existed on the ground.

The data revealed the true shape of their market across 6 counties: which regions had strong store penetration, which were underdeveloped, and most critically, which areas were showing dangerously low scan activity relative to the volume of product Ajab knew was being distributed there. Low scans in a high-distribution area meant one thing: stores were buying from a competitor.

The geographic breakdown told a story no internal report had ever surfaced:

• Mombasa, long assumed to be the dominant market, came in at 34.8%
• Kwale emerged as a meaningful third market at 18.8%
• Kilifi county accounted for 45.8% of all scans, a market that had carried near-zero internal expectation

The data didn't just show where Ajab was strong. It showed, for the first time, where they were losing and to whom.

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The Action It Led To

Armed with store-level data, Ajab's leadership could now deploy resources with precision instead of instinct.

In areas where scan density was low relative to known distribution, Ajab deployed sales agents on the ground. Their job: visit stores directly, understand why Ajab's product wasn't moving, re-engage lapsed stockists, and pitch new outlets that had never carried the brand.

In regions where the data surfaced unexpected strength, Ajab doubled down by allocating more distributor attention and sales resources to markets that the numbers had validated, rather than waiting for distributor reports that would never come.

The loyalty programme itself became an action lever. Store owners who scanned regularly were progressing through tiers Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, VIP. Each tier represents a deeper relationship with the brand and a stronger incentive to keep buying.

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The Results

In the first 6 months, Ajab enrolled 3,350 a total of stores and built the most granular store-level dataset in their category.

Nearly 1 in 3 enrolled stores - around 1,005 outlets - are buying at least one bale every single week. That is not a loyalty programme metric. That is a retained, high-frequency customer base that Ajab can now see, segment, and serve - for the first time.

The 53.1% monthly active rate means over 1,775 stores are purchasing at least once a month, sustained entirely through a programme that required no sales force expansion - just a QR code inside every bale.