Participated · Seed · Nov 2024

Founded in 2021 by Samba Lo and Serigne Seye, Socium began as a recruitment website and has since expanded into a global HR platform serving Francophone Africa. The product enables clients to recruit, run payroll, manage time and performance, and automate mundane HR tasks. Socium built a payroll engine that handles the region’s complex calculations and claims it can launch in a new country within two weeks, faster than foreign-based solutions. The platform uses AI to score and match CVs to job offers and to aid in writing job descriptions. Socium says it has over 100 active clients across 10 industries and 15 countries and is leveraging a first-mover advantage in Francophone Africa. Future plans include continued expansion across the 21 Francophone African countries and integration with tax agencies to automate tax and regulatory filings.

Participated · Seed · Feb 2023

Terraa sources fresh produce directly from farmers and fulfills orders for retailers, restaurants and other resellers via its website and WhatsApp. The company performs most processes internally for quality control and plans to increasingly partner with vetted external providers to support operations. It addresses a fragmented Moroccan fresh-food supply chain dominated by intermediaries, aiming to reduce post-harvest losses and offer consistent, competitively priced goods. Terraa cites high inefficiencies and opacity in the value chain and notes that up to 40% of fruits and vegetables in North Africa are lost or wasted. The startup intends to build collection centers in major agricultural cities to store and distribute collected produce. It plans to use its new funding to strengthen logistics infrastructure, expand across Moroccan cities, and explore regional expansion within about a year. Terraa also plans to develop demand-forecasting capabilities to guide farmers on what and how much to produce, reducing overproduction and wastage.

Participated · Seed · Dec 2022

Suplyd provides an end-to-end digital procurement solution for small and medium-sized restaurants, replacing fragmented daily orders with a single streamlined platform. The product connects operators with hundreds of quality products, offers real-time analytics, and delivers procurement insights to simplify restaurant supply procurement. The company intends to expand operations and its development efforts and to enter untapped areas across Egypt while accelerating the development of new service verticals. Suplyd has shown strong operational growth since its 2022 pre-seed, growing nearly 20x in restaurants served and value of goods delivered. Today it serves over 5,000 restaurant customers and continues to roll out new operational tools and services. Suplyd operates a B2B procurement platform for HoReCa businesses that digitizes order procurement, payment and fulfillment, giving restaurants on-demand access to a wide range of SKUs at competitive prices. The platform aims to bring an e-commerce experience to restaurant supply chains, reduce waste, optimize assets and save time by replacing offline sourcing and manual supplier follow-ups. Suplyd also runs a network of tech-enabled fulfillment centers that provide real-time analytics and demand-pattern insights to inform stocking and guarantee fulfillment. The company was founded in January this year and is currently serving 500 customers in greater Cairo, reporting nearly 50% month-over-month growth since launch. Suplyd plans to use the new funding to scale its technology, expand within and beyond Cairo and explore additional growth opportunities across the MENA region.

Participated · Seed · Feb 2022

Freterium offers a transport management software designed as a neutral, platform-agnostic logistics operating system that connects shippers, carriers and other stakeholders across the freight value chain. The product supports planning (route and capacity optimization), execution and monitoring, post-delivery invoicing control, performance analytics and multi-enterprise collaboration. Freterium claims rapid deployment (under a week) with no upfront costs and enterprise pricing ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per month. In its first full year the company onboarded more than 20 enterprise customers, grew 35% month-over-month and has over 3,000 users. The startup was launched in 2020 and is YC-backed. The company plans to use new funding to invest in R&D, double its team within 12 months, market the software and expand across Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Participated · Seed · Sep 2019

MaxAB operates a B2B e-commerce and distribution platform that connects suppliers with traditional grocery retailers across Egypt and Morocco. Since launching in 2018, it has connected suppliers with over 150,000 unique traditional retailers and delivered more than 2.5 million orders. The company focuses on groceries as its core product and has built an asset-heavy distribution operation. MaxAB has expanded into Morocco (now ~10% of its business) and plans to enter Saudi Arabia by the end of 2023. It has also developed fintech offerings for merchants, including a bill-aggregation product that has grown 5x in transaction value year-to-date and a newly launched working capital product. The company has raised multiple rounds (including a $55M Series A last year) and has raised over $100M in total; management says the recent raise was to accelerate opportunities rather than to address a cash shortfall. MaxAB operates a tech-enabled B2B e-commerce marketplace that lets store owners purchase goods, request delivery and logistics, and access customer support. The company was founded in 2018 by Belal El-Megharbel and Mohamed Ben Halim and until recently operated in Egypt. MaxAB plans to expand across the Middle East and North Africa, launch new product offerings and grow its team. Financially, the company completed a $40M Series A tranche and has taken a $15M Series A extension, bringing the total Series A to $55M. MaxAB announced the acquisition of Morocco-based WaystoCap (amount undisclosed) as its first step toward regional scale into the Maghreb. The combined platforms will serve more than 70,000 retailers; WaystoCap alone had grown to a network of over 8,000 Moroccan retailers and at one point processed over $3M in transactions per quarter. MaxAB operates a B2B e-commerce platform that manages procurement, delivery and logistics for traditional food and grocery retailers in Egypt; store owners can purchase goods, request delivery and access customer support through the app. The company owns and operates its own warehouses and fleet, buying and revamping warehouses and using internal technology to manage inventory flow. MaxAB says it services more than 55,000 merchants, delivers over 2,000 unique products and has grown staff to about 1,600 people. Founded in November 2018 and based in Cairo, the team has been launching into a new city roughly every month this year. The startup plans to expand its physical footprint across MENA, hire more talent, scale new supply-chain verticals and roll out embedded finance solutions to offer credit and capital financing via banking and non-banking partners. MaxAB reports improved unit economics during the COVID-19 pandemic as it consolidates its position in the market. MaxAB built a digital platform with apps for store owners, a logistics app for its delivery fleet, and a customer support app to manage procurement and delivery of grocery products. The company operates a large warehouse, a fleet of 60 trucks, and reports a staff of 270 and 9,000 retailers on its app. MaxAB generates revenue from margins on the buy-to-sell price of products and expects scale to improve margins toward profitability. Using the new funding, it plans to expand operations to several additional cities in Egypt and grow its tech team. The startup also aims to offer working-capital financing and data-analytics services to its retail clients. MaxAB was founded in 2018 and is led by CEO Belal El-Megharbel, who co-founded the company with Mohamed Ben Halim.