The closing of a $3 million Seed round has been announced by OneOrder, an Egypt-based fintech-enabled restaurant management platform that provides food supply to hotels, restaurants, and cafés. Leading Mena early-stage VC, A15, also contributes to this round, which is led by Nclude. Brendon Blacker, managing partner of Delivery Hero Ventures, a fund funded by the world’s largest meal delivery company, joins the OneOrder board. Following a pre-Seed investment of $1 million, headed by A15, and $6.5 million in working capital financing from other local NBFIs, today’s news takes the company’s total investment to $10.5 million.
OneOrder plans to increase its internal operations and tech talent, scale its sales team to increase market share, and substantially invest in its proprietary technology using the most recent capital infusion. The tech-driven food and hospitality company will also invest more money in growing its offline presence and expanding its warehouse network throughout Egypt and the Mena region.
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Speaking on the round, Tamer Amer, Cofounder and CEO OneOrder stated, ‘As a restauranteur myself, I have witnessed first hand the avoidable overheads and hassles HoReCa businesses go through in serving their customers. We are delighted by the level of adoption and growth we have recorded over the past year which is testament to the fact that we are addressing a huge unmet demand in our region. Asides improving efficiency, we are reducing costs and impacting restaurants’ bottom lines — saving them time through operational efficiency and money through improved purchasing power and economies of scale. Joined by prominent global investors with deep knowledge and extensive expertise in our sector, we look forward to our next phase of rapid growth.’
Brendon Blacker, who has extensive experience working with and investing in technology-enabled companies in the global F&B industry, has also been added to OneOrder’s board as part of the funding round.
Why The Investors Invested
Since its founding, the firm has gained a lot of traction. OneOrder has a TAM of 400,000 restaurants that spend $40B yearly in total in Egypt alone.
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Basil Moftah, Managing Partner at Nclude added, ‘We have been impressed by OneOrder’s remarkable progress, driven by the unparalleled market expertise of Tamer, Karim and the entire team. The product-market fit of the OneOder solution is very impressive, along with the positive impact it is delivering to all stakeholders in the value chain. Through the use of technology and alternative data, OneOrder’s embedded financing will help underserved clients who are unable to secure traditional financing. This aligns perfectly with our investing philosophy and we are glad to be embarking on this journey with the team.’
Brendon Blacker, Managing Partner at Delivery Hero Ventures, commented, ‘I’m privileged to be able to join OneOrder’s board and support the company’s rapid expansion plans. The explosive growth of the business in the last year is testament to the huge value that OneOrder’s industry-focused solution has been able to generate for its HoReCa customers. I am very excited for the journey ahead with Tamer, Karim and the OneOrder team.’
Karim Beshara, Managing Partner of A15, added, “A15 is excited to continue backing Tamer, Karim and the entire OneOrder team on their journey to solve HoReCa procurement pain points in Egypt and beyond. Having met Tamer during the ideation stage of the company, we are proud of what OneOrder has achieved since launch and look forward to the next chapter of the story alongside our new partners.”
A Look At What The Startup Does
OneOrder, a $40 billion HoReCa market in Cairo, Egypt, was established in 2021 by co-founders Tamer Amer and Karim Maurice. It uses technology to address supply chain issues like a lack of product availability, price volatility, inconsistent product quality, on-time and accurate delivery, and a lack of working capital financing.
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The OneOrder app, which has versions for iOS and Android, brings together a large number of reliable and vetted providers on a single platform. Due to a fragmented and opaque supply chain, restaurants currently have to communicate with up to 70 different suppliers and deal with low fulfilment quotas.
Customers also have access to a 600 SKU food and non-food supply catalogue through OneOrder, which includes a curated list of chilled and frozen items that can be delivered the following day. Due to economies of scale, OneOrder’s large purchasing power enables them to negotiate the best pricing. As a result, the cost of goods sold is decreased and hospitality businesses no longer need to incur additional storage and warehousing expenses.
OneOrder ensures a smooth order-to-fulfillment process by using its patented technology to create enormous value and boost efficiency throughout the supply chain from client to supplier. Customers can place orders and manage their inventories through a customised interface. OneOrder also manages all of its warehouse inventory through its unique warehouse management system for suppliers and to guarantee product availability and prompt and accurate fulfillment.
In an effort to solve the issue of restaurants’ lack of working capital, OneOrder has been able to create a new financing solution for its customers thanks to having complete insight of the entire process. OneOrder can develop lasting relationships with its client base and offer flexible, low-risk financial support packages based on data-backed insight if it has better visibility into its customers’ revenue and purchasing behaviours. As a result, OneOrder has joined forces with financial technology enabler PayMob to provide long tail restaurants with working capital finance and alternative payment options.
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Since OneOrder restaurants lack vertically integrated supply chains, they must invest between 6 and 7 percent of their sales to maintain the stability of their supply chains. OneOrder’s timely proprietary tech platform, which also provides users with 360-degree access over their businesses through cutting-edge analytics and statistics, is responsible for engineering the faultless ordering process. The startup will now focus on the next stage of its AI and machine learning journey to improve restaurant demand planning, ensuring they never run out of stock, accounting for high and low seasons, and eradicating waste, among other goals.
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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