Egyptian Ecommerce Platform ON Market Raises $215,000 Pre-Seed Round
ON Market, an Egyptian e-commerce platform, has raised USD215,000 from regional angel investors lead by Yasser AlGhamdi. The money will help the firm expand into major cities such as Cairo, Alexandria, Tanta, and Mansoura, as well as scale its technology solutions.
“Our customers have trust and loyalty to brands and retailers that cannot be easily replaceable. We develop our products in-house to connect them with the retailers they trust and love, where they can follow their latest offers, pricing updates, and product availability. For the first time in the market, we allow them to order from multiple stores by placing only one order and getting it delivered all at once. We’ve surveyed a sample of 200+ customers, and we found that 90% of them prefer to get all their orders at once, even if it’ll take more delivery time, even up to an hour,” Moatasem Marzouk, the co-founder and CEO, said.
Influenced by the global market boom in online groceries, the market in Egypt is growing drastically, has attracted more than USD150 million in investments for the year 2021, and is expected to attract more investments in the next coming years. Egypt, as well as scale its technology solutions.
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“The grocery market in MENA, including Egypt, is promising. We believe the team behind ON Market has the necessary experience and mindset to build a remarkable success story, and we’ll support them to achieve that all of us together,” Yasser Alghamdi, the lead investor, said.
A Look At What The Startup Does
ON Market, founded in June 2020 in Tanta by Moatasem Marzouk, Seif Yasser, Ahmed Najjar, and Moataz Marzouk, and graduating from the AUC Venture Lab’s acceleration program in 2021, enables food shops to create and sustain online commerce using technology solutions. Simultaneously, they connect customers with nearby grocery merchants via their app, enabling them to place a single order from several retailers for the first time in the market.
“Are we another grocery app? Absolutely not! Unlike most players in the market, we are empowering retailers with tech and business solutions to have online commerce and scale their businesses. As a marketplace, we don’t have warehouses or stock making us more flexible and agile than others to expand and scale. Moreover, our model allows us to have a retailer as a partner in every residential block and neighbourhood, which allows us to deliver a big basket size of up to EGP 1,500 in under 60 minutes only,” Seif Yasser, the co-founder, and Head of Sales said.
ON Market’s co-founders have complementary skills in e-commerce: software engineering, software product management, business, and sales, gained at both large corporations like as Google, Volkswagen, and Delivery Hero, as well as startups and scaleups such as Marsool, WUZZUF, and JustClean.
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Additionally, Moatasem Marzouk “By the end of 2021, we will have grown 10x in only one city, delivered 20,000 orders with a GMV of EGP 4 million, onboarded 70 shops, and achieved a 65 percent retention rate. In February 2022, we expanded our business to Nasr City and Masr El Gedida, with plans to grow to Mansoura in Q3 2022 and Alexandria in Q2 2023, earning $6 million in GMV.”
Moatasem describes their potential market opportunities as follows: “Egypt’s grocery sector is estimated to be worth over $35 billion and is predicted to grow at a rate of 15% to 20% over the next three years. That market is not yet completely disrupted, and it is our opportunity to change that with our team, retail partners, and investors, before extending to MENA’s $200 billion markets.”
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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.
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