Cairo-based B2B ecommerce marketplace Fatura has raised more than $1m in a seed round led by Egyptian venture capital firm Disruptech. Founded in 2019, Fatura connects FMCG wholesalers with small retailers via a mobile app, allowing retailers order from a claimed inventory of 1,500 SKUs.
The funding comes as fellow Egyptian buying platform MaxAB, which raised $6.2m in its seed funding round in September 2019 is already preparing another funding round.
Fatura (meaning invoice), which has been founded by ex-McKinsey consultants, claims its point of difference is how it is building its service. The company is looking to curate a network of 200-250 wholesalers across Egypt and enable them to transform the value chain below them. Egypt has around 5,000 wholesalers. On its app, Fatura, says that it helps supermarket owners compare and find the best price from wholesalers and lets them order all the goods they need easily and at no [additional] cost.
In common with other buying platforms, Fatura is also looking at providing credit options. Ahmed Anwar, Fatura’s co-founder and COO, notes that “around 60% of the current wholesale market in Egypt is through on-credit purchases.” Fatura will use its own trading data to determine credit rating.
According to AbdAllah Moheb El-Din, Fatura’s CTO of Fatura, “a major value of the platform is the market data analysis and the AI-enabled decision making based on it. We help FMCG manufacturers to make better data-driven decisions and provides unprecedented transparency on prices and stock levels to retailers to maximize their profits.” In other words, Fatura also has a service line for business analytics and demand planning.
