Egypt trucking marketplace startup, Trella has raised more than $600,000 in a pre-seed funding led by Algebra Ventures. Several strategic investors, global venture capital firms (VC) and angel investors also contributed in the fund raising.
Trella was founded in 2018 by Omar Hagrass and Pierre Saad to address the issues in a deeply fragmented trucking market in Egypt. It bids to reduce costs for shippers by improving load utilization and efficiency; offering transparent pricing schedules, and enabling shipment tracking in real-time.
The CEO of Trella, Omar Hagrass has significant experience with the transport technology space; having served as the regional manager of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) for Uber. “Building on the fantastic success of ride-hailing start-ups, we built a similar solution for the freight industry in the region to improve efficiency throughout the supply chain.”
“The interest in our solution has been overwhelming, both from businesses who want to use our technology, and from truckers who are getting significantly more value and more consistent flow of business through our platform. We’re optimizing truckers’ routes so they’re no longer driving empty,” he said.
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We’re thrilled to be leading this round,” says Karim Hussein, Algebra Ventures’ Managing Partner. “They’re a superstar team with proven execution ability. The large and highly fragmented freight market in Egypt is ripe for technological disruption. We are excited to be joined by a group of capable and experienced co-investors who will help accelerate Trella’s growth in the short run and support it in subsequent financing.”
The former Head of Uber Eats, Jambu Palaniappan, expressed his excitement to invest in Trella as part of their pre-seed funding as the premise of bringing world class logistics technology to shippers and carriers across Egypt is a strong one.
Similarly, the angel investor, and the Executive Founder of Wellville, Esther Dyson, said that Trella’s combination of Hagrass’ real-world logistics experience and Saad’s tech experience is perfect for the task of making the region’s trucking infrastructure more transparent and efficient.
The startup has pointed out that asset utilization was a problem it wanted to tackle head-on, this was a direct result of the lack of transparency within the trucking ecosystem. Trella empowers drivers and cuts costs for shippers by connecting them digitally, thereby improving load utilization and inducing efficiency within the network.
It will be using these funds for capacity acquisition, carrier education and expansion of their product portfolio.
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