Homzmart, the Cairo-based furniture marketplace is starting this year on a strong note. The startup has raised $1.3 million in a seed round, making it one of the largest seed rounds ever raised by an Egyptian startup.
“We are going after a huge market valued at more than $60 Billion. There are 25 million people in the MENA region searching for home furnishing every month with no serious player serving them online,”Mahmoud Ibrahim, the co-founder and CEO of Homzmart said.
- The round of investment came from China’s MSA Capital, Oman Technology Fund (OTF), and Choueiri Group’s investment arm Equitrust, 500 Startups and some other strategic investors also joined the round.
What The Startup Does
- Founded late last year by Mahmoud Ibrahim and Ibrahim Mohamed, Homzmart is an ecommerce marketplace that connects furniture manufacturers and vendors with customers, selling furniture online.
- The platform showcases different designs to help customers personalize their ideas and vision for their home, and bring it to reality, a feature the founders see as an important part of the furniture purchasing decision.
- Both the founders have a solid ecommerce background. Mahmoud started his ecommerce career with Rocket Internet’s Jumia in 2012 serving Jumia Egypt as VP Operations and then went on to join Daraz, the leading ecommerce platform of South Asia as a Managing Director for Pakistan. He was Daraz’s Group COO when the company was acquired by Alibaba for an estimated $200 million. Ibrahim is also a Jumia alumnus and used to lead company’s ‘logistics development and expansion’ in Egypt.”
- Mahmoud said that they started Homzmart to solve pain points of both customers and furniture manufacturers.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer.
He could be contacted at udohrapulu@gmail.com