Dubai Based Opontia raises $20M in seed round

Opontia, the startup has announced it raised $20 million in debt and equity in a seed round. The round was led by Global Founders Capital, Presight Capital, Raed Ventures, and Kingsway Capital. Other notable angel investors in the round include e-commerce across EMEA; they include Tushar Ahluwalia, CEO of Razor Group; Jonathan Doerr, the former CEO of Daraz and co-founder of Jumia; and Hosam Arab, the CEO of Tabby and the former CEO of Namshi.

Opontia was founded in March 2021 by Philip Johnston and Manfred Meyer, the startup specializes in acquiring high-performing e-commerce businesses in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain from its offices in Dubai and Riyadh. The firm has claimed that its main aim is to take the burden off e-commerce brands by convincing them to sell their brands and for Opontia to manage all parts of its operations.

The company acquires brands with at least $10,000 in monthly revenue and at least $5,000 in net profit per month. The categories of products they are interested in includes less seasonal ‘all weather’ products like kitchen products, bathroom, sport, home and living, cosmetics, and toys.

The capital raised will be used to fund the acquisitions and grow these brands, with the rest for expanding its team of e-commerce experts and it plans on expanding in Cairo, Istanbul, and Lagos.

Manfred Meyer co-CEO of Opontia speaking on the company said that the business model of acquiring smaller businesses in the e-commerce sector is promising in Africa’s business space with more and more entrepreneurs turning up.

“The market in the Middle East and Africa is currently less mature than in the West but is growing faster than any other market in the world, with the number of sellers on marketplace growing at over 50% per year, The business model will work here because there have been so many amazing entrepreneurs in the Middle East coming up over the last few years. It’s a great opportunity for sellers to be able to realize some of the hard work from building their brand so that they can take a break or work on their next big thing” said Meyer.