Egypt’s B2B E-Commerce Platform Fatura Raises USD 7-Figure Seed Round

Egypt-based B2B e-commerce platform Fatura has raised a 7-digit USD figure seed round from Disruptech – the first Egyptian fintech-focused VC Fund – along with FG EV and the Cairo Angels. The platform connects FMCG wholesalers to retailers and also serves as a digital lending platform for small merchants. 

Founded in 2019 by Hossam Ali, Ahmed Anwar and Abdullah Mohebeldin, later joined by former BiscoMisr and Massfood CEO Ahmed Al Bakary, the company serves FCMG retailers through an easy-to-use mobile app which enables the retailers to access a database of vetted wholesalers and their catalogues. Meanwhile, Fatura also helps users make use of underutilised assets owned by wholesalers and resolves supply chain inefficiencies for retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers and other relevant stakeholders.

“Egypt has more than 5,000 wholesalers, investing heavily to build another one will not solve the inefficiencies that currently exist in the relationship between wholesalers and retailers. This capital-intensive approach never made sense to us in light of the Egyptian market’s realities,” says Hossam Ali, Fatura's co-founder and CEO, an ex-McKinsey consultant. “Instead, we are on a mission to curate a network of 200-250 wholesalers across the country, digitally transform the way they work, and enable them to collectively lead the FMCG distribution business nationally.”

Besides, being a one-stop-shop for over 1500 SKUs, the company is also set on offering working capital loans to retailers using data from the transactions to get a better grasp of the behaviour of retailers and the extent to which they are suitable and eligible to receive financial credit. 

“Around 60% of the current wholesale market in Egypt is through on-credit purchases,” adds Ahmed Anwar, Fatura's co-founder and COO and former supply chain consultant. “We will be the first player to unlock the opportunity of digitising the lending cycle.” In addition to these ambitions, Fatura also currently provides market intelligence reports to FMCGs. Fatura’s CTO, AbdAllah Moheb El-Din sees that a major value of the platform is the market data analysis and the AI-enabled decision making based on it. He adds that the platform helps FMCG manufacturers to make better data-driven decisions and provides unprecedented transparency on prices and stock levels to retailers to maximise their profits.

“The wholesale-retail link has been a black box in the industry that has never been opened. Nobody knows who sells what, where and at what cost,” says Ahmed Al Bakary, non-executive chairman of the board of Fatura, who’s also former CEO of BiscoMisr and Massfood, “Fatura is stepping up to regulate this chaos.”

Zeina Mandour, General Manager of the Cairo Angels, says: “We are very pleased to have closed this investment round and to have co-invested in this opportunity with other local investors. We are very confident in the Fatura team. We have no doubt that they will use this 7-figure investment to scale and provide their services throughout all of Egypt.”