Viro began with a question Keith Morgan Kiboroh kept coming back to:
Why does discovering something online and actually buying it still feel like two completely different experiences?
Across Africa, people increasingly discover products through social media. A creator can make someone interested in a product within seconds, yet the actual purchase often moves somewhere else-into a WhatsApp conversation, a payment request, a separate marketplace or a completely different website.
Keith saw an opportunity to bring that journey together.
He began building Viro, an African social-commerce platform designed around short-form video, creator discovery and native purchasing.
The idea was not simply to put a store inside a social app.
It was to make commerce part of the discovery experience itself.
BUILDING VIRO
Turning that idea into a real product meant building much more than a video feed.
Keith built Viro as a working consumer platform combining short-form video, creators, merchants, product discovery, chat and payments.
Because the product was being built for the realities of the Kenyan market, that also meant designing around local payment and fulfilment behaviour.
Viro supports M-Pesa payments, including STK Push and escrow-based transactions, alongside cash-on-delivery. Orders can be fulfilled through merchant dispatch, pickup points and parcel-based delivery.
The challenge was therefore not simply building software.
It was connecting entertainment, discovery, trust, payment and fulfillment into one coherent experience.
FROM AN IDEA TO A LIVE PRODUCT
Viro launched to users in July 2026 without paid user acquisition.
Instead, Keith grew the platform through organic distribution, creators, merchants, referrals, WhatsApp sharing and university networks.
By 22 August 2026, Viro had reached:
19,409 registered users
2,340 daily active users
5,285 weekly active users
11,879 monthly active users
KSh 1.24 million in GMV
410 registered creators
128 weekly-active creators
691 products
34 shops
Those figures represented an important transition.
Viro was no longer simply an idea or prototype.
People were using it. Creators were joining. Merchants were listing products. Transactions were happening.
THE HARD PART
The difficult part of building Viro was not creating another social feed.
It was making the entire journey work:
Discover → Engage → Connect → Chat → Shop → Buy → Return.
Keith had to work across mobile engineering, backend infrastructure, recommendations, media delivery, payments, fulfilment and user experience to make that loop function as a single product.
He was also building in a market where trust matters.
A customer needs to believe that the product they discover through content actually exists, can be paid for securely and can reach them.
That meant Viro had to be designed around real African commerce rather than simply copying an existing social platform.
CRIW 2026
In September 2026, Viro was presented at Central Rift Innovation Week 2026 at Kabarak University.
The innovation received Second Place - Silver Award.
For Keith, the recognition came after Viro had already moved beyond the prototype stage and into real-world use, with users, creators, merchants and actual transactions on the platform.
The award became another milestone in a much larger journey.
THE VISION
Keith's ambition for Viro is not to build another shopping application.
The goal is to create an African-native platform where entertainment, creators and commerce naturally connect.
A person should be able to discover something through a video, interact with it, learn more, communicate with the seller or creator and complete the purchase without being forced through a disconnected chain of platforms.
What began as a question about the gap between discovery and purchasing has become a live platform with thousands of users and real economic activity.
At its core, Viro is built around a belief:
African technology can be designed around the way Africans actually discover, communicate, pay and do business.
Website: https://viroafrica.co.ke
