The popular Cairo-based grocery platform startup, Appetito has raised about $450K on a Seed round from a gathering of Saudi Arabian Angel investor Ahmed Al Alola. He led the entire funding round in a beginning phase who was one of the early sponsors of Nana and Sary along with Afropreneurs Fund which is an African is tech fund reserve. The round has already upheld top new businesses like Andela, Flutterwave, and Trella and that’s not all. The round also saw support from Jedar Capital, an arising VC with an aim to be on different and new startups in the MENA region.
The platform was set up back in March last year. Since then, Appetito has been working through a dark stores model, where items are sourced directly from the manufacturers and then put away in smaller than usual. After that, the delivery process comes up and it becomes complete. The startup began with a wide scope of private name items serving all spaces of Cairo, Giza, and Alexandria with the following day and pre-planned deliveries for the most convenience.
As of late, the organization extended its item portfolio to incorporate in excess of 1000 SKUs from notable buyer marks and entered the hyper accommodation race by offering its clients deliveries under hours in the near zones.
“We’re proud of what we have achieved in just a few months from our launch. We’re privileged to have such prominent investors backing us. With their support and the team we’re building, I’m confident we will be in a leading position in the global race of grocery delivery,” said Shehab Mokhtar, the Founder, and CEO of Appetito.
“Observing the radical change in consumer’s behavior post-COVID-19, the grocery delivery market is expanding rapidly in the region. I believe Appetito – with its stellar team – is well-positioned to lead that segment and capture the market by delivering superior experience compared to what is currently available in most of the African space,” said Ahmed Al Alola.
“Our investment into Appetito’s seed round follows on our proven thesis of investing in strong founders with unique local insights and a bias towards execution. We are excited by what Shehab and his team have achieved so far, and we are very bullish on the Egyptian early-stage ecosystem,” said the Managing Partner of Afropreneurs Fund, Idris Bello.
We are excited to be part of Appetito’s journey in Egypt and the MENA region. We have been watching Appetito’s execution and the team’s growth-focused approach with very limited resources early on, this was a clear message to us on how resilient and focused they are. Appetito is best suited for growth with the digital transformation happening in Egypt where online commerce growth is skyrocketing and saw a huge leap with covid, more and more customers now are adopting online grocery shopping as their standard now. We believe that Appetito’s model focusing on dark stores rather than aggregating from grocery retail stores will add value and differentiation in the market and play a pivotal role in terms of operational efficiency and gross margin contribution. We look forward to supporting them with their expansion and growth plans in Egypt and beyond,” said the Founder and Managing Director of Jedar Capital, Sherif Nessim.
