Egypt’s elmenus, a restaurant discovery platform which recently launched online ordering announced it had raised funding from Julian Dames, foodora co-founder and VP DeliveryHero as it enters its next phase of growth.
Dames, who from 2015 onwards acted as MD and global CMO and responsible consumer business of the foodora group has joined the company’s board of advisors.
After the IPO of DeliveryHero in 2017, Julian assumed responsibility for the foodpanda markets leading a major rebrand and product migration of the markets to the foodora platform. From 2018 onwards Julian acted as VP International Marketing for DeliveryHero SE, looking after the APAC region before he decided to leave DH beginning of 2019 to pursue new opportunities.
With extensive global experience in the food space (foodora was acquired by DeliveryHero in 2015), Dames will work closely with elmenus as it takes on Egypt’s online ordering market.
Founded in 2011 by Amir Allam to help people find the food they’ll love, elmenus is a platform built to answer the universal question, ‘What am I going to eat today?’. Having recently launched online ordering, and with over one million monthly users, elmenus has built the most comprehensive platform for restaurant information – with a focus on personalizing food recommendations using data it has already collected, and is optimizing, using AI.
‘elmenus has a compelling position in the large Egyptian food delivery market. Their delivery order numbers in the first few months have been very impressive,’ says Dames. ‘The mainly phone-based market is just on the verge of going online. As a native Egyptian player with well-established positioning as the consumer’s go-to platform, and with strong ties in the restaurant sector, elmenus will be able to focus on features that are relevant for the Egyptian user (from consumer to delivery rider to restaurants) which may prove advantageous against the global competitors.’
In 2017, the Cairo-based elmenus raised $1.5m in Series A funding from Algebra Ventures, Egypt’s leading VC fund, to take on the underserved online ordering market in Egypt with very rapid success.
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‘As elmenus scales rapidly, Julian’s uniquely valuable experience and insights will help accelerate our growth and sharpen our focus as we grow,’ says Allam, elmenus’ CEO. ‘We’re obsessively personalising and enhancing users’ food experiences at scale. “
Recently, elmenus has been attracting top-tier talent to its management team, including Head of Marketing, Karim Ebeid (ex. Head of Growth at Glovo Egypt), CFO, Mohamed Younis (ex. Renaissance Capital), and Chief Strategy Officer, Mohamed Mossad (ex. Strategy Consultant at Bain Dubai).
With over one million monthly users on the platform, elmenus has built the most comprehensive portal for restaurant information in Egypt – with a focus on personalizing food recommendations for users using AI.
