SideUp Raises $1.2 million, Below the Average Seed Round In Egypt
Between 2020 and 2022, four African startups have risen to become the BIG FOUR, in terms of startup funding. Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya and South Africa, have played a significant role in digital tech activities within the continent. Even when it seems there are reduced funding activities, startups within these countries still pull in funding almost every week.
Another Egyptian startup, SideUp, has successfully secured seed funding to support its e-commerce platform available in the Northern African country.
SideUp was able to raise the seed round to the value of $1.2 million, although this is below the average of the rise of a seed round, yet, it seems to be a success as it will push SideUp’s expansion plan.
SideUp was founded in 2019 initially as Voo, meant to serve as a logistics platform that serve B2C outfit. It rebranded recently to focus and push its e-commerce feature to the market, this is aside other services such as wearhousing, API integration for shipping, etc.
An ample amount of startups secures funding in 2022, of which many of them secured seed funding. The likes of Kenzz, MaxAB and Hoods did not secure less than $2.5 Million each as seed fund. This seem to be the trend with Egyptian startups in 2022. In comparison with other e-commerce startups, SideUp is quite below the other seed fundees.
A reduced seed fund could be caused by its month on month raise compared to other startups within the same niche. Irrespective of the raise, SideUp plans to expand its services beyond the shores for the Afircan continent, and up to Saui Arabia, in the Middle East, Asia.
While speaking about the startup’s challenges SideUp is out to solve, the startup founder and CEO said “There is a lot of talk about how e-commerce is scaling, but still, we are not empowering enough of those (micro, small and medium enterprises) that are selling online,” Rashed said. “Merchants need many services and a complete ecosystem to be successful.”
If the startup is focused on procuring solutions to the highlighted challenges, it should see a better Series A funding round.