The Fashion Kingdom (“TFK”), Egypt’s first curated e-commerce marketplace for fashion, beauty, and home products with a 360-degree value proposition for companies, has announced the successful conclusion of a $2.6 million Seed fundraising round.
The first corporate venture capital firm in Egypt, CVentures, and the top early-stage venture capital firm in MENA, A15, jointly led the Seed funding round. Previous investors and fashion industry veterans Paul Antaki and Nasser Chourbagi also contributed. The sustainability and inclusion venture fund, Lotus Capital, African-focused investors Raba Capital, Sunny Side Venture Partners, Foundation Ventures, and The Cairo Angels are among the new participants.
“We are delighted to announce The Fashion Kingdom’s $2.6 million seed fundraise. The support of new and existing investors is a proud moment for the entire team. TFK is a curated marketplace much needed by the rapidly growing fashion e-commerce world. Our market opportunity is vast, and the drivers underpinning it — are compelling. We have grown by more than 3.3x in the last year, and the online customer groups we cater to, are only growing larger. Our competitive differentiators, plus access to our investors’ wealth of knowledge and regional expertise, positions us perfectly to become the market leader in Egypt and beyond,” Fadi Antaki, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at The Fashion Kingdom said.
The money raised will be put to use expanding the team, developing scalable technologies, and quickening TFK’s efficient growth. Strengthening and expanding TFK’s 360 value proposition for brands, which entails providing a one-stop shop for operations, co-marketing, omnichannel, and digital content creation services to support local fashion brands in their efforts to go digital, increase their online sales, and become more sustainable, is another strategic priority.
Why The Investors Invested
The startup has acquired considerable traction since it was founded. Through their curated marketplace and 360 value offer, TFK is presently assisting more than 200 local and international leading companies in increasing their online sales. Additionally, TFK is used by over 135,000 people for their fashion buying needs. Since 50% of the company’s managers and 43% of its employees are women, the organisation also encourages the careers of female talent.
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TFK is filling the void left by the absence of a clear market leader in Egypt’s fashion e-commerce sector. The company’s KPIs are impressive: order volumes have increased by 3.3x year over year, and this growth rate is anticipated to continue in 2022.
According to the most recent Statista research, TFK’s total addressable market in Egypt, which includes the fashion, personal beauty & household, and home furnishings e-commerce sectors, is $4.2 billion. The value of the worldwide e-commerce fashion sector was close to $700 billion in 2021. It is anticipated to increase past that amount by the end of 2022, and Statista projects that it will reach approximately $1.2 trillion in 2025.
“TFK’s digital launchpad for fashion, beauty and home accessory brands conforms well with Egypt’s rapidly moving e-commerce scene, essentially enabling small and large brands to sell online as the Company makes shopping easy and accessible for a large and growing target audience. CVentures is excited at the prospect of working closely with TFK, and we look forward to helping Fadi, Marianne and Karim achieve their vision and grow into additional markets,” Shady Tadross, Director at CVentures, said.
A Look At What TFK Does
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The co-Founders Fadi Antaki, Marianne Simaika, and Karim Abd El Kader founded TFK in July 2020 with the goal of assisting local fashion entrepreneurs and brand owners sell online, providing customers with a convenient and affordable shopping experience, and fostering the development of young and emerging talent.
Fashion ecommerce TFK Fashion ecommerce TFK
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard. You can book a session and speak with him using the link: https://insightsbyexperts.com/view_expert/charles-rapulu-udoh