Grace Ashiru
Kenzz, an en e-commerce platform based in the Egypt and MENA region, secures $3.5million in a seed funding round. The round was led by Outliers Venture Capital, a venture capital firm focusing on the MENA area. Some of the investors who are taking part are Samurai Incubate, Foundation Ventures, and HOF Capital.
Ahmed Atef, Mahmoud Al Silk, and Moataz Sami started the business in February. Before launching its app, it plans to use the seed round to add more product categories to the platform, hire more people, and invest in technology.
The founders of Kenzz say that the fact that many people in Egypt use the Internet and buy things online hides the fact that e-commerce in Egypt and the wider MENA region is not yet fully developed and optimized. Atef, the CEO, says that they made Kenzz easier for people in Egypt to do business online.
Online shoppers in Egypt usually buy from big e-commerce sites like Souq, which will become Amazon Egypt in 2021, Jumia, and Noon, or from B2B2C social commerce sites that use Facebook pages and groups.
Both business models have helped grow e-commerce in Egypt, but Atef says that the big online stores ignore the mass market and focus on Cairo, Alexandria, and Giza instead. Meanwhile, smaller social media platforms often offer services that can’t be trusted and aren’t well organized.
So, Kenzz made up for the problems with the other two models by making things easy for anyone and giving them structure.
Furthermore, Atef stated that the Kenzz model benefits local manufacturers and SMEs by providing customer demand information, access to these customers, and other information.
Kenzz is currently fine-tuning its products so that they meet customer needs. Atef says that during the platform’s two-month “soft launch,” customers often asked for it. During this time, he said, thousands of customers used the platform, and 50% of those customers placed orders outside Egypt’s biggest cities.
According to Sarah AlSaleh, partner at Outliers Venture Capital, the asset-light Kenzz is addressing two essential problems that current e-commerce incumbents are not addressing: Last-mile logistics that is both affordable and dependable, as well as a consumer trust philosophy that is unwavering.
She says that the founding team’s years of experience from Vodafone, Google, Amazon, and Jumia are one reason Outliers invested in Kenzz.
Techbuild’s Opinion
The success of your website depends on how well you meet the needs and goals of your online visitors. There are many ways to improve a client’s online experience, such as using data management systems or regularly posting helpful information. Using the right e-commerce strategies, you can make customers happy and get them to stick with you for years.
E-commerce has had a significant effect on societies worldwide, just as technology has changed how we see the world and go about our daily lives. E-commerce has completely changed how businesses run daily, and it keeps giving them more options.
You can compare Egypt’s e-commerce scene to Africa’s fintech scene because there are more startups in that industry than in any other.
Statistics show that 20% of Egypt’s tech startups are in e-commerce and retail. One of the many things that make the country a good place for these kinds of businesses is the growing number of young, urban people who use the Internet and mobile phones.
According to studies, 40% of Egyptians make weekly online purchases. Kenzz is taking advantage of this opportunity to broaden its platform.
