Talabeyah a Cairo-based startup running a food and grocery B2B e-commerce and distribution platform has successfully raised $1.1 million in a pre-seed round from strategic angel investors. The company which manages the tech-powered supply chain model aims to alleviate the pain of the small retailers in Egypt by helping buy and manage their inventory using the digital platform.

The startup was founded by Karim Nassef, Amr Abbas, Khaled Hussein and Adel Hodroj in July of 2020 and leverages the founders combined have over 60 years of experience in the FMCG industry in finding efficiencies
and value in a competitive space, innovating in their supply chain model and purchasing experience in building a customer-centric business.

Karim Nassef, the co-founder and CEO of Talabeyah, said, “This is a highly fragmented market with multiple layers that leads to high inefficiencies and low service levels. Our aim is to disrupt and digitize this informal market by leveraging technology and an innovative supply chain. We are providing a tailored simple solution to a complex problem; making our clients one click away from their inventory with guaranteed next-day delivery, reliable customer service, and a high service level. Giving the retailers the time to focus on growing their business and running their operations. Our end-to-model provides the FMCG suppliers with optimized cost to serve operation, bigger reach to retailers, direct marketing communication channels, and real-time data to enable them for better planning.

“Our experience as a team in this industry gave us a lot of advantage, the team was able to grow a highly capital-intensive business achieving a gross merchandise value of $6 million with an initial investment of only $180,000 generating an annualized revenue of 66X the amount capital injected in the company,“ said Nassef.

Hamed Barakat, Talabeyah’s CFO, said “This round will help scale the operations, further build the technology, and leverage the use of AI and machine learning algorithms utilizing the collected data to enhance the customer experience and drive efficiencies through the value chain and grow our team to better serve this market. We believe there is still a lot of value and innovation to be added to the different layers of this market to create a better ecosystem, and we are on a mission to do that” He added.