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Egypt’s Glamera Plans Regional Expansion With New Funding

October 16, 2022

Egyptian beauty services booking platform Glamera has raised a US$1.3 million seed funding round to help it expand operations across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Glamera has been in business since 2019 with the core objective of allowing users to book appointments with hundreds of contracted providers covering all beauty sections, including salons, clinics, spa, gym, and dental.

Mohamed Hassan, founder and CEO of Glamera

The startup has tens of thousands of users and hundreds of providers in Egypt, and is also active in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. It raised a six-figure US dollar seed round in 2020, and has now banked a further US$1.3 million in a round led by Riyadh Angels Investors (RAI).

The round, which also features Techstars, Ithraa Venture Capital, 100 Ventures, Lucrative Ventures, and angel investors, will be used by Glamera to launch more services and move into new markets in the region.

“We have successfully validated the market need, and now we can confidently work towards leading the market with our fully integrated solutions. We aim to work with over 2,500 clients and achieve US$500 million GMV by the end of 2023,” said Mohamed Hassan, founder and CEO of Glamera.

Kelechi Deca

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Egyptian SaaS Startup Glamera Raises $1.3M In Seed Round

October 6, 2022

Glamera is a SaaS startup that was founded in Egypt but has now moved its operations to Saudi Arabia. The company recently completed a Seed fundraising round that garnered $1.3 million and was headed by Riyadh Angels Investors (RAI).

Investors from Techstars Accelerator, Ithraa Venture Capital, 100 Ventures, Silicon Valley Venture “Lucrative Ventures,” and Super Angel Investors all took part in the round.

“The fund will be used to continue developing and launching the planned new services and expand to more gulf markets,” said Omar Fathy, Founder and CTO.

A Look At What The Startup Does

Glamera was established in 2020 by Mohamed Hassan and Omar Fathy, and it quickly expanded to span a number of cities in Saudi Arabia, including Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, Taif, Qassim, Madina, and Tabuk, in addition to Cairo and Alexandria in Egypt.

The All-In-One platform offers B2B services to businesses that provide services in the beauty and lifestyle industries, such as beauty salons, barber shops, fitness centres, spas, and makeup artists. Additionally, it offers a B2B2C marketplace in which customers may locate these service providers and book appointments with them.

To this day, it has enabled a gross merchandise value of $45 Million to be transacted, and it has accomplished ongoing development in both revenue and customer acquisition.

“We have successfully validated the market need,” said Mohamed Hassan, Founder and CEO. He continued “and now we can confidently work towards leading the market with our fully integrated solutions and play part in the Saudi digital transformation vision 2030. We aim to work with 2500+ clients and achieve $500M GMV by the end of 2023.”

The founding team shared how they have high hopes that such news would throw light on a long-forgotten industry that has seen very little development over the years despite the fact that it is immense in size and has a significant possibility.

Glamera SaaS Glamera SaaS

Ugandan Ride Sharing Minibus Services Easy Matatu Raises New Funding

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

A Year After, Egypt’s Beauty Services Booking Startup Glamera Raises Further Six-figure Investment

August 10, 2020

Barely a year after raising $250k from unnamed angel investor, Cairo-headquartered beauty services booking platform Glamera has further raised six-figure investment from Saudi’s Dual Gate Investment Holding. The exact amount involved in this round of funding was not disclosed.

Here Is What You Need To Know

The startup, which was inspired by the previous funding, expanded to Saudi and Iraq earlier this year.
With the new funding, it plans to further expand its services in Riyadh and Jeddah.
According to Mohamed Hassan, co-founder & CEO of Glamera, Covid-19 has meant increase in demand for the startup’s services.
Hassan noted that users now prefer to book appointments with salons instead of simply walking into them which has also resulted in more service providers now using its services.

A Look At What The Startup Does

Launched just last year, by Mohamed Hassan, Omar Fathy, and Zafer Alshehri, Glamera facilitates appointment bookings for beauty and health services at salons, spas, gyms, and diet and dental clinics, through its mobile app. The startup’s users can browse different services to find the available options, see their prices, book appointments with them, and even pay for the services right from the app.

Glamera claims to have 100,000 users (it did not clarify what this means but it is apparently referring to sign-ups on its platform) and over 700 providers. Its app now also allows users to book home visits of different providers or even request remote diet, beauty or dental consultation with its partners.

For some years now, Egypt has made a dramatic leap in a number of fast-expanding startups and an amazing set of supporting institutions and communities.

In 2018, Egypt was ranked the fastest growing startup ecosystem in the Middle East and North Africa and the second largest after UAE, according to a report by start-up platform MAGNiTT.

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