Globally, food and grocery distribution start-ups have led to late mega-rounds, especially in Europe where the epidemic has given birth to more people than ever before to order online. This growth has translated into volume growth across e-commerce platforms around the world. Although Africa has relatively little in the way of increasing investment, startups in Mena are largely interested in B2B e-commerce. Today, the latest of these is coming out of Egypt.
Starting from Cairo, a startup that provides a network of traditional food and grocery retailers across Egypt, the series has raised $ 40 million in funding. The company, which claims to launch in a new city every month this year, will expand its physical footprint across the Middle East and North Africa. In addition, Maxab plans to hire more new talent and vertically scaling the newly launched business with its newly launched supply chain and embedded finance solutions. Founded in November 2018 by Belal L-Megharbel and Mohammed Ben Halim, Maxab’s platform collects and delivers groceries to Egyptian stores.
Store owners can use the platform to purchase, distribute or request delivery of goods and access the customer support team. “It’s not just a technology platform; we run our own warehouse, we run our own fleet. And the idea was pretty simple,” CEO L-Megherbell told TechCrunch. According to him, small traders in Egypt, representing a huge part of the country’s GDP, find it quite difficult to collect their products.
Producers, on the other hand, have to spend a lot to serve markets like Egypt, where more than 400,000 small mom-and-pop shops sell 90% of their groceries in the country. “We’ve seen that using technology has a huge role to play in optimizing this supply chain so we can get the right amount of products in the right place at the right time,” explained El-Megharbel, CEO who left Kerem in 2018. Start Maxab. He calls Maxab Amazon for Middle Eastern retail. There is a slight comparison. This can be a challenge for third-party e-commerce delivery companies to operate in emerging markets.
