Egypt's ExpandCart raises $2.5M in Series A funding from private investors
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Egypt-based e-commerce platform, ExpandCart, has raised $2.5 million from private investors to fund its expansion plans in the region. The funding round was led by Egypt’s VC Sawari Ventures alongside Agility Ventures, Graphene Ventures, and two other angel investors.
The investment will be utilized in digital commerce solutions targeting both online and offline retailers which will reduce the gap between merchants and suppliers across the Middle East. ExpandCart, which was formed in 2013, primarily focuses on online retail and wholesale business and claims to have over 20,000 merchant users spread across 40 different countries.
Key quote
“We believe that technology can empower commerce and with that vision in mind, we have built solutions to help merchants expand their sales online and offline. This new round of funding will help us work on our ambitious roadmap of new innovative eCommerce solutions that we will be rolling out to supercharge e-commerce growth in the Middle East,” said Amr Shawqy, Co-Founder and CEO, ExpandCart in a media statement.
“Since our previous funding round in 2019 with ExpandCart, we have been working with them as a strategic partner in the region, their amazing highly-integrated product along with their impressive growth proves they are the only platform positioned to lead the Middle Eastern market. This is why we were eager to join this round with a follow-on funding,” said Fahad Al Shatti, Vice President, Corporate Venture Capital, Agility.
Competitive than peers
The Cairo headquartered e-commerce platform ExpandCart offers competitive rates at e-market space compared to its peers like Shopify. The company comes with various integration offers including local and regional payment gateways and logistics solutions and language options like Arabic and English.
A survey conducted by Facebook showed that as many as 67% of SMEs in Egypt are optimistic about resuming operations, despite the coronavirus pandemic hitting businesses. As companies are forced to transform digitally, 34% of small and medium businesses revealed 25% or more of their sales were made digitally in the past month.
