Egyptian B2B eCommerce platform Cartona has received a $12 million Series A funding from Silicon Badia, with the active support of the SANAD Fund for MSME.
Along with previous investors Global Ventures and Kepple Ventures who joined Cartona’s adventure last year, they doubled down in this round along with Arab Bank Accelerator and Sunny Side Ventures.
Cartona, a company founded in 2019 by Mahmoud Abdelfattah, Mahmoud Talaat, and Rafik Zaher, embraces the idea of a cashless future and invests in operational integration and embedded finance with all stakeholders.
The business strategy used by Cartona is asset-light; it does not own any inventory, vehicles, or warehouses.
Removing inefficiencies along the supply chain in a very capital-efficient manner and enabling smooth financial services to an underserved network of hundreds of thousands of shops, enables Cartona to carry out its objective of digitizing Egypt’s conventional, primarily offline commerce industry.
The CEO and co-founder of Cartona, Mahmoud Talaat, said: “We are thrilled to have finished our Series A fundraise. The support of new investors and the renewal of existing investors reinforces our approach to a capital-efficient, asset-light business model aimed at enabling all industry players, enhancing operational efficiency, and being supported by solid unit economics”.
Cartona is expanding quickly and steadily. With plenty of expansion opportunities, it quickly scaled to handle roughly 1 million transactions annually.
60,000 people utilize Cartona, which also partners with 1,500 distributors and wholesalers, and 200 FMCG brands, including household names like Henkel, Unilever, Bel, and Mondelez.
With the funding, Cartona will expand quickly across Egypt to include all governorates, develop its products, technologies, and services, and look into new industry verticals outside FMCG.
Read more on Tech Gist Africa:
FMO has committed $10 million to Algebra Fund II
Bloom, a fintech startup in Sudan, has raised a $6.5 million seed round
MNT-Halan, the Egyptian fintech super app, has closed a $150 million securitized bond offering.