Egypt-based online retailer, Kenzz has raised $3.5 million in early-stage financing, to hire staff, create products, purchase equipment, and launch an app.
Outliers Venture Capital, a VC fund that supports early-stage outlier innovators in the US, the Middle East, and North Africa, led the seed-stage fundraising round. HOF Capital, Foundation Ventures, Samurai Incubate, and angel investors were some of the global technology investment firms that took part in this round.
The opportunity to fully optimize e-commerce in Egypt and Mena is now, according to Ahmed Atef, CEO of Kenzz. “We purposely built Kenzz to appeal to consumers who aren’t yet convinced that e-commerce is a useful and commonplace way of shopping,” says the company.
The most populous nation in the Arab world, Egypt, is relying on industries like technology and start-up ecosystems to diversify its economy.
According to start-up data platform Magnitt, venture capital funding in Egypt more than quadrupled to $307 million in the first half of the year from 2021, placing it third in the Mena region. During the first half of the year, there were 78 agreements in the nation, an increase of 22% annually.
Ahmed Atef, Mahmoud AlSilk, and Moataz Sami founded Kenzz in 2022 to offer e-commerce services to customers in Egypt and Mena. With discounts of up to 65%, Kenzz’s platform digitizes the offline buying process.
The company sources its goods directly from producers and importers, and it bases its business model on providing consumers cheaper rates when they share or purchase products for a larger group of people.
In order to lower delivery costs for customers and Kenzz’s logistical expenses, group orders can also be transported to a single location. The start-up said that Kenzz was bridging the gap between conventional offline and online buying with a model that reflected the requirements and daily habits of the consumer masses and made it easily accessible.
According to the company, Kenzz’s concept helps regional manufacturers and SMEs build their businesses by providing them with access to data, insights, and otherwise difficult-to-reach end users.
According to Sarah AlSaleh, partner at Outliers Venture Capital, “Kenzz is solving two critical challenges that existing e-commerce incumbents are not addressing: inexpensive and dependable last mile logistics and an unwavering consumer trust philosophy.”
According to Foundation Ventures’ managing partner Omar Barakat, the platform was created with the public at large in mind.
According to Omar, “Kenzz is socializing the shopping experience and enabling customers to maximize savings by shopping in groups.” “This takes advantage of the social character of Egyptians while offering them items that are reasonable and trustworthy. The platform created by Kenzz is designed to benefit everyone.”
