A startup, Dentacarts, which sells oral health products online based in Cairo, has raised $450,000 investment from AUC Angels, Asia Africa Investment & Consulting (an investment firm investing in healthcare startups in Africa), and 500 Startups (it was part of Misk500’s first cohort), the startup said in a statement. 

Hasan Haider, venture partner at 500 Startups- MENA region. 

Here Is All You Need To Know

• Founded in 2017 by Ahmed Yehia and Saad Saleh, DentaCarts, as its name suggests, is a dental marketplace that sells different dental products to dental clinics and dentists mainly in Egypt.
• The startup said its catalog consists of over 10,000 products (available on its web and mobile-based platform) ranging from clinic furnishing to everyday disposables which (it says) is the largest collection of dental products (online in the region).
• DentaCarts has recently also added a category of (offline) courses and events, selling their access to dentists, through its platform.
• Ahmed Yehia, the co-founder and CEO of DentaCarts also noted that they have served over 1,500 customers to date in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Kenya, completing more than 10,000 orders. The startup has close to 100 authorized dealers on its platform.
• DentaCarts plans to use the investment to fuel its growth.

Why The Investors Invested

500 Startups, one of the investors is continuing with its trend of preferring Egypt’s startups more than others. To-date, 500 startups has invested in 37 Egyptian startups in our portfolio, which is around 30% of  total investments in the MENA region.

‘’As a firm, we typically invest at the seed stage of a start-up’s development. How that is defined varies, but on average we are looking for startups that have launched a product and have been generating revenues of at least $5,000 a month, for the last three-six months, growing at least 20% month over month. Startups at this stage are generally raising between $300,000 — $500,000 in total to scale their customer acquisition, traction, and metrics.

We’re looking for balanced founding teams, with a bias towards execution, going after a large market with few to no competitors, and a product that users want,’’ said Hasan Haider, venture partner at 500 Startups- MENA region. 

AUC Angels is the first university-based angel investor network in the MENA region. The network recently made its first investment in the Cairo-based cleaning services startup Jinni. 

Read also: Egypt Ranks Top In Startup Financing In The Middles East And North Africa  –MAGNiTT  Report

Comments: 

DentaCarts seems to really complete what has been a year for startups in Egypt. A record number of deals have been sealed so far, criss-crossing almost all sectors you can think of. In simple terms, even though other ecosystems across Africa, such as Nigeria, Kenya or South Africa saw more higher deals, in terms of total dollar commitment, Egypt still hold the forte as the only country in Africa where most startups are likely to raise funds. 

New report just released by community and data platform for startups, MAGNiTT, on startup financing in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) showed Egypt topping the whole of MENA in the number of startup financing deals concluded as well as some growth in the number of financing deals across the region in the first nine months of this year, compared to the same period last year. Egypt topped with 27% of concluded deals, and ranked second in terms of attracting funds with a share of 13% of the total funds attracted by the region.

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world