Rabbit: The Egyptian Startup Sprinting Through the Q-Commerce Race
We sit down with the founding team of an Egyptian startup that, after raising a record pre-seed round in 2021, is poised to lead the q-commerce race in one of MENA's largest markets.
The pandemic-induced acceleration of digitisation in Egypt and much of the Middle East has deemed that e-commerce is no longer the peak of tech-powered shopping convenience. Yes, quick-commerce, or q-commerce, is the en vogue sub-sector of online food and grocery shopping and in Egypt, one platform has taken a head-start in the race: Rabbit.
Founded in June, 2021, co-founders Ahmad Yousry, Walid Shabana, Ismail Hafez and Tarek El Geresy, wasted no time in launching, releasing their delivery app onto the world in October, one offering its on-demand quick commerce services for groceries. So quick, in fact, that it promises to deliver in under 20 minutes.
Just one month later, Rabbit closed a record pre-seed round for a startup in the Middle East and Africa. Worth $11 million, the round included participation from the likes of Global Founders Capital, Foundation Ventures, Raed Ventures, MSA Capital, and Goodwater Capital and positions the startup for its ambitious plans to lead Egyptian e-commerce into what has been touted as a fruitful future for some time, as we found out when we paid the Rabbit team a visit at their Cairo headquarters.
