Egyptian E-Commerce Startup El Dokan Raises $550,000 Pre-Seed

El Dokan, an Egypt-based e-commerce solutions company, has raised $550,000 in a pre-seed funding round led by local and regional investors including Flat6Labs, EFG EV, 500 Global and Hala Ventures. Founded in 2020 by Ahmed Maher, Mohammed Shirt and Sherif Alaa, El Dokan helps companies build customised e-commerce stores through its technology and software solutions. The startup mainly caters to large and medium size retailers as well as startups.

Utilising headless technology, where the frontend (what users typically see and interact with) is separated from the backend of the website, businesses are able to build highly customised and personalised e-commerce stores, which in turn increases their efficiency and drives business growth.

"The majority of retailers have repeatedly shown the willingness to either replace the traditional e-commerce methods with more advanced and flexible technology,” Mohamed Yousry, chief technology officer (CTO) and co-founder of El Dokan, tells StartupScene. “The technology 'changes the equation' by helping retailers drive sales growth while simultaneously bringing down maintenance costs, making it possible for our retailers to quickly and easily develop APIs connections with our partners to ensure the highest levels of operational efficiency. Our technology can easily integrate with any third-party providers like payments, shipping, point of sale (POS) and (ERP) systems."

According to the startup, its clients have been able to achieve $45 million in GMV sales by using its technology.

The new funds will be used to develop the startup’s technology and expand to international markets.

Egypt’s startup ecosystem has been recording positive growth so far this year. Venture capital funding in the country grew by 457% in Q1’22 compared to the same period last year, with e-commerce closing the lion’s share of transactions, according to a recent report by data platform Magnitt. Some local e-commerce startups driving this growth include Cartona raising $12 million; OneOrder raising $6.5 million; and The Fashion Kingdom raising $2.6 million.