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Eyewa

Eyewa offers prescription contact lenses, color contact lenses, sunglasses, and eyeglasses.

Cairo

Homzmart

Homzmart is an online end-to-end platform that sells home furniture, home décor, lighting, and home supplies.

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Calo is D2C foodtech startup that serves personalized meal subscriptions.

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Seez is a data-first retail platform for automotive buying and selling services. The Seez mobile app for car shoppers offers a smart search engine for online car listings, as well as proprietary, AI-powered tools, and services that make the car shopping journey faster, easier, and more efficient.

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Automotive focused e-commerce marketplace bringing innovation to the used-cars market.

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Usersdot

Usersdot, a leading AI-based B2B SaaS company in Turkey, provides next-gen e-commerce data intelligence solutions. Trusted by global brands like L'Oréal and Dyson, Usersdot helps e-commerce businesses make data-driven decisions, increase sales, and save time. With 7 AI-powered SaaS products, it delivers real-time insights for tracking and optimizing online performance. In 2023, Usersdot closed a second investment round with an $11 million valuation, led by Arya Ventures.

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EdfaPay

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EdfaPay Is a Fintech Company That Uses Soft-PoS Technology and Payment Gateway Services for Online and Offline Merchants to Give the Most Efficient Payment Solutions!

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Tazah Technologies

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MoneyHash aims to streamline the development and management of payments, acting as a dedicated payment team by offering a versatile cloud platform so businesses worldwide can focus on their core operations.

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FlexxPay is an online platform for employers who can access their earned salaries & commissions instantly, before the regular payday.

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Speero is the largest marketplace for car parts and services in Saudi Arabia, with a mission to accompany car owners in maintaining their vehicles, while helping repair shops and part vendors move their operations online and boost their businesses. Speero is the ultimate one-stop shop for all car owners.

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Fitness

Valeo allows you to optimize your health by empowering you to take control of your health using a personalized mobile health tracker.

erad

<ul>
	<li>Egypt-based Homzmart, an&nbsp;online furniture and home goods marketplace has raised $15 million in its Series A round led by MSA capital and Nuwa Capital with participation from Rise Capital, Impact46, EQ2 Ventures, and Outliers Ventures.</li>
	<li>Launched in 2020, by Mahmoud Ibrahim, former COO of Daraz, and Ibrahim Mohamed, former head of logistics at Jumia, Homzmart enables retailers like IKEA to connect directly to consumers who are provided with flexible financing options. &nbsp;</li>
	<li>Homzmart currently has more than 55,000 products listed on its platform and claims its sales have grown 30x over the past year.</li>
	<li>The investment will be used to expand Homzmart&rsquo;s presence in the region.</li>
</ul>

Press release:

Homzmart, the Middle East&rsquo;s leading furniture &amp; home goods marketplace platform, successfully closed its US$15 million Series A financing - the largest round in this sector in the Middle East to date.

The capital raise was led by MSA Capital, a global investment firm with over $1.5 billion in assets under management, and Nuwa Capital. Other participating investors include Rise Capital, Impact46, EQ2 Ventures, and Outliers Ventures.

Hard-launched in Q1 2020, Homzmart was co-founded by Mahmoud Ibrahim, former COO of Daraz, and Ibrahim Mohamed. Ibrahim was formerly at Jumia and led the company&rsquo;s logistics development and expansion in Egypt. The wider management team includes former senior executives of Jumia, Rocket Internet and Alibaba.

Homzmart has grown sales by over 30x in the last twelve months, and is tapping into the rapidly expanding 14 million customers in the region who search online for furniture each month. The platform showcases over 55,000 products from thousands of brands and merchants.

The industry has been historically characterised by high distribution costs for retailers, and poor accessibility for consumers. Homzmart&rsquo;s platform and its end-to-solutions enable both retailers &ndash; including the likes of IKEA and Home Centre by helping them easily reach customers &ndash; and also consumers who have a hassle-free, one-stop-shop shopping experience, with greater choice and flexible financing options.

Homzmart&rsquo;s&nbsp;<a href="https://homzmart.com/">easy-to-navigate platform</a>&nbsp;incorporates Artificial Intelligence to optimise furniture sellers&rsquo; content, with intelligent tools helping customers with purchasing decisions.

Whilst focused on the regional market opportunity, Homzmart has strategically launched operations in close proximity to Damietta City, Egypt - the region&rsquo;s largest furniture manufacturing hub. This allows Homzmart to streamline the region&rsquo;s vertical industry supply chain.

Homzmart&rsquo;s CEO and co-founder, Mahmoud Ibrahim, said:

&ldquo;We have seized the opportunity to digitize shopping for furniture and home goods. The market opportunity in the region is huge, and our business model is perfectly set up for it. Homzmart provides an easy one-stop-shop platform to transform the experience for furniture sellers and consumers, and we are very excited about our next stage of growth.

&ldquo;We are delighted to complete this funding round. It will accelerate our progress to expand regionally and execute our strategy of consolidating the whole value chain. I would like to thank all our investors for their support.&rdquo;

MSA Capital&rsquo;s General Partner, Ben Harburg, said:

&ldquo;The Covid-19 pandemic exposed the extreme vulnerabilities and inefficiencies of the Middle East&rsquo;s archaic offline retail ecosystem, logistics, and supply chain. Into the void stepped Homzmart as the next generation, digitally enabled online marketplace and optimised logistics provider for large item retail addressing both consumer and enterprise customers. Mahmoud and his team&rsquo;s executional excellence, born out of deep experience managing ecommerce and fulfilment in challenging conditions with Jumia and Daraz, and guided by Chinese best practices from Alibaba, has resulted in a firm that has rapidly become the dominant online marketplace, fulfilment, and finance facilitator for all merchants and brands in the region.&rdquo;

Sarah Abu Risheh, Partner at Nuwa Capital, said:

&ldquo;Homzmart had already carved a solid trajectory for itself early into the pandemic, in an industry that needed an uplift. The way Mahmoud, Ibrahim and their team managed to exponentially and continuously grow the business during a global economic slowdown further demonstrates that it is a truly exceptional company.&rdquo;

Homzmart closes $15 million Series A round

Furniture and home goods e-commerce platform Homzmart has closed one of the past year's biggest funding rounds for a Middle Eastern and North Africa start-up, raising $23 million, its chief executive said.

The company, launched in 2020, will use the new funding to expand services, especially logistics, and fill gaps that appear in supply chains, co-founder and CEO Mahmoud Ibrahim said in an interview with Reuters.

The latest pre series B round funding round, which included participation from Riyadh-based technology venture capital fund STV, Impact46, Outliers Venture Capital, Rise Capital and Nuwa Capital, brings its total funding to about $40 million.

It raised $15 million in an earlier round that closed in the second quarter of last year, after an initial round in which it raised about $2.5 million.

Homzmart started by connecting brands and manufacturers with customers in the Arab world's most populous country. But it found gaps in supply chains that prompted it to create a logistics arm, and now has about 100 trucks.

It also in March acquired Berlin-based home interior design firm MockUp Studio, which uses artificial intelligence to make designs.

Earlier this year the company's activities expanded to Saudi Arabia, and Ibrahim said it had achieved solid growth there. "The percentage of activity in the Kingdom is now between 25% and 30% of the total volume of Homzmart business," he said in the interview on Sunday.

The company says it serves 25 million houses in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, with more than 150,000 products on the platform.

Homzmart has not yet achieved profitability but Ibrahim said it is still focused on expansion and building market share "through lazer-focused profitability milestones".

Investment in MENA start-up Homzmart rises to $40 million after latest round

In most parts of Africa and the Middle East, a consumer journey and experience in buying furniture is not fun. A typical shopping process would entail looking for the best price and quality and asking for recommendations and checking offline stores, one after another.

It is rare to find one-stop shops, especially large offline ones, that can adequately cater to the needs of consumers in the MENA region. Home goods and furniture marketplaces have launched in the last three years around the region to meet this need. Egypt’s Homzmart is one such, and today the company is announcing it has closed its $15 million Series A investment.

The company was founded in 2019 by Mahmoud Ibrahim and Ibrahim Mohamed, but it didn’t launch until the first quarter of 2020. This round of financing follows a $1.3 million seed investment raised in February last year. According to the company, this brings the total amount raised to $17.2 million. 

China’s MSA Capital, one of the investors in Homzmart’s seed round, co-led this Series A investment alongside Nuwa Capital. Other participating investors include EQ2 Ventures, Impact46, Outliers Venture Capital and Rise Capital.

The furniture industry in Egypt has been historically characterized by poor accessibility for consumers. Homzmart’s marketplace collects designs, price ranges and other details of its retailers’ products and solves high distribution costs for them by providing access to consumers who have flexible financing options. In addition, Homzmart said it incorporates AI to optimize content for retailers and intelligent tools to help customers with their purchasing decisions.

“As a marketplace, we stand between the supply and demand. So we connect furniture and home goods suppliers with consumers,” CEO Mahmoud Ibrahim told TechCrunch in an interview. “It’s almost like a big hassle to buy furniture in Africa and the Middle East. And I think it’s a pain all over the world when it comes to having a place that you can shop all your needs when it comes to home products.”

Over the last 12 months, Homzmart claims to have grown 30x in sales. It also showcases more than 55,000 products from thousands of brands and merchants. The online marketplace is tapping into the rapidly expanding $80 billion industry where 14 million customers in the region search online for furniture monthly.

When Homzmart kicked off its hard launch and raised its seed round, it was right at the start of the pandemic. Ibrahim said the company was uncertain that it would survive due to anticipated behavioral changes in consumer spending. But the opposite happened. Customers in Egypt grew to like the product, resulting in more sales like most marketplaces and e-commerce platforms witnessed this past year.

“At the beginning, we were very worried and not sure how customers would react to buying furniture during the pandemic in the Middle East online. So we’re actually amazed by the traction as it seemed like the region was waiting for something like this to happen.”

The growth experienced within the pandemic was one reason MSA Capital decided to double down on the startup. As stated by Ben Harburg, the firm’s general partner, “The pandemic exposed the extreme vulnerabilities and inefficiencies of the Middle East’s archaic offline retail ecosystem, logistics and supply chain. Into the void stepped Homzmart as the next-generation, digitally enabled online marketplace and optimized logistics provider for large-item retail addressing both consumer and enterprise customers.”

Another reason behind the investment, the firm said, is the vast experience of both founders in e-commerce and fulfillment. Mahmoud was the VP of Operations for Jumia Egypt before becoming the Group COO of Daraz, a Southeast Asian company acquired by Alibaba in 2018. Mohamed is also a Jumia alumnus and was part of the logistics development and expansion team in Egypt. 

Although their experience with different verticals in everyday commerce in Jumia and Daraz was invaluable, the founders chose to launch in the niche furniture market instead of building a similar model as their former employers. “We decided this was a really good vertical that we needed to focus on and hold ourselves accountable to digitizing in the region,” Mahmoud said about developing the niche product.

Homzmart’s first year in business was all about understanding supply and demand. The next couple of years is a strategy to expand across the MENA region, helping fulfill demand from a young and fast-growing consumer middle class.

“Whatever we did in Egypt, we need to do across the region. Homzmart isn’t looking to be just an Egyptian platform, rather a regional platform,” the CEO said.

The company has strategically launched operations close to Damietta City, Egypt, to focus on this regional market opportunity. The city is known to be one of the largest furniture manufacturing hubs in the Middle East and thus allows Homzmart to streamline the region’s vertical industry supply chain. An integral part of this supply chain is handling logistics and the movement of products from merchants to buyers. The company said a sizable tranche of investments would be used for this effort.

What’s next for the company when logistics is handled?

“I’ll say the thing that keeps me awake at night is the fact that our business is growing very fast. And we need to make sure that we’re building the right institutional infrastructure for that business, to make sure that after two or three years, we’re building like a very solid, multibillion dollar business,” Mahmoud remarked.

Egyptian furniture marketplace Homzmart lands $15M Series A for MENA expansion

<ul>
	<li>UAE-based eyewa has closed its Series B funding round, raising $21 million. The round was co-led by Kingsway and Nuwa Capital, with participation from French Partners, Endeavor Catalyst, Derayah, Palm Drive, and Hardy Capital.</li>
	<li>Founded in 2017 by Mehdi Oudghiri and Anass Boumediene, eyewa has grown to become the Middle East&rsquo;s largest online eyewear retailer.</li>
	<li>This investment will be used to support eyewa&rsquo;s expansion plans, investing in its technology and product teams as well as investing in its retail and omnichannel strategy.</li>
	<li>This $21 million Series B funding round brings the total funding to date of&nbsp;eyewa&nbsp;to $30 million. Eyewa previously raised a $1.1 million seed round in 2018 led by EQ2 Ventures and a $7.5 million series A funding round in 2019 led by Wamda.</li>
</ul>

Press release

eyewa, the largest online eyewear retailer in the Middle East, today announced its latest Series B funding round of $21 million. The round, which was co-led by Kingsway and Nuwa Capital, with participation from French Partners, Endeavor Catalyst, Derayah, Palm Drive, and Hardy Capital, will support the company with its ambitious expansion plans, further investment in top-tier technology and product teams, as well as best in class retail and omnichannel technology.

Created with the vision of becoming the largest tech-enabled eyewear company in the Middle East,&nbsp;eyewa&nbsp;is now embarking on a journey to enter the retail sector. With many brands in the past year going from offline to online,&nbsp;eyewa&nbsp;is heading in a different direction and exploring opportunities with bricks and mortar stores in key locations, taking customer experiences to the next level.

Mehdi Oudghiri, co-founder of&nbsp;eyewa&nbsp;comments, &ldquo;We have built&nbsp;eyewa&nbsp;with customers in mind in every part of our journey. After building a truly disruptive online offering with best-in-class customer experience, we are very excited to embark on an omnichannel journey that will allow our customers to explore&nbsp;eyewa&rsquo;s differentiated experience in both the physical and digital world. Our stores are built on the basis of what made our success online, with a vibrant look and feel in line with our times, leveraging technology in every aspect of customers&rsquo; interaction and exclusive products at accessible prices.&rdquo;

Since its launch in 2017, the homegrown Middle East brand has cemented itself as a leader in the eyewear e-commerce market and has built a trusted and reliable reputation in the UAE, KSA, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain. Not only does it stock and sell contact lenses and eyewear from all the major brands,&nbsp;eyewa&nbsp;has also invested heavily into building its house brands which fulfil untapped wants and needs of the local market.&nbsp;eyewa&nbsp;has designed and developed three unique ranges spanning different price points; including the lifestyle eyewear brand 30Sundays, the fast fashion collection called Blackout, as well as a natural colour contact lenses range, Layala. The homegrown brand has specifically created these for the modern Middle Eastern consumer.

Anass Boumediene, co-founder of&nbsp;eyewa, comments, &ldquo;This fundraise will boost our expansion plans and will enable us to offer a better customer experience in the eyewear vertical, both online and offline. The customer response since our launch four years ago has been formidable and we count on keeping our promise of offering the best products at the best price across the region. While we have focused our first few years in our home markets of UAE and KSA, we are now expanding beyond to the rest of MENA and will bring our successful formula of affordable eyewear and amazing customer experience to a wider audience.&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

This $21 million series B funding round brings the total funding to date of&nbsp;eyewa&nbsp;to $30 million, after&nbsp;eyewa&nbsp;had raised a $1.1 million seed round in 2018 led by EQ2 Ventures and a $7.5 million series A funding round in 2019 led by Wamda Capital.

Khaled Talhouni, Managing Partner of Nuwa Capital comments, &quot;We&rsquo;ve been working with Anass and Mehdi since the beginning of their journey and it is such a privilege to have a front row seat to the development of a company as remarkable as&nbsp;eyewa. A big part of our thesis at Nuwa Capital is to focus on the next evolution of retail. The confluence of offline, online and private label-driven commerce is at the heart of this thesis, and we would be hard-pressed to find a team that has executed as well as&nbsp;eyewa&nbsp;has on this concept in the region. Joining this latest round of financing is a testament to our strong belief in the company and the team to deliver on building a unique regional champion for direct-to-consumer commerce.&quot;

eyewa closes $21 million Series B

Valeo, a UAE-based wellbeing-tech startup, has closed a $3 million Seed funding from multiple investors including Global Founders Capital, Global Ventures, Nuwa Capital, and FJ Labs.

Valeo Wellbeing is a personalised health tracking and guided wellbeing app that gives its users control over their health. Users can schedule at-home wellbeing tests, get impactful advice based on their results and connect with certified wellbeing coaches from around the world. The Valeo App allows users to have easy access to their wellbeing data enabling them to better understand their bodies. Valeo Wellbeing Coaches provide personalised lifestyle, nutrition, and movement guidance to set users on the right track to optimal health.

Wellbeing app “Valeo” raises $3 million in Seed round

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