Egypt B2B Marketplace Startup Talabeyah raises 7-figure pre-seed round

Cairo-based food and grocery B2B e-commerce and distribution startup Talabeyah, has secured $1.1m in funding from a group of angel investors to help boost its strong early growth.

Talabeyah was founded by Karim Nassef, Amr Abbas, Khaled Hussein, and Adel Hodroj in July 2020, to provide a tech-driven supply chain model to ease trading for small-scale retailers across Egypt.

Tayabelah leverages its tech-driven supply chain model to alleviate pain points by small-scale retailers across Egypt allowing them to use Talabeyah’s digital platform to buy and manage their inventory.

Talabeyah claims it achieved a cumulative gross merchandise value of US$6 million in its first 15 months of operations, with an initial investment of around $180k, and has now banked another US$1.1m as it looks to grow faster.

Talabeyah CEO and co-founder Karim Nassef speaking said that the startup aims to disrupt and digitize the informal market using tech.

“This is a highly fragmented market with multiple layers that leads to high inefficiencies and low service levels. We aim to disrupt and digitize this informal market by leveraging technology and innovative supply chain,” Nassef said.

Talabeyah’s end-to-end model also provides FMCG suppliers with a bigger reach to retailers, direct marketing communication channels, and real-time data to enable them for better planning.

Hamed Barakat, Talabeyah’s CFO also said: “We believe there is still a lot of value and innovation to be added to the different layers of this market to create a better ecosystem, and we are on a mission to do that,” he said.

Barakat has mentioned that the new funds will be used to scale operations, build technology, leverage the use of AI and ML algorithms.