ExpandCart, the Middle East and North Africa’s leading e-commerce platform, has raised $2.7 million in a Pre-Series B bridge round headed by Hong Kong’s Betatron Venture Group, with participation from existing investors Sawari Ventures in Egypt and Agility Ventures in Kuwait.
The new round of funding will help ExpandCart expand in current markets while focusing on R&D, technology development, and new product development in order to enable 1 million merchants across the Mena region in the next three years using a variety of products, including their new conversational commerce chatbot solution ExpandBot, which allows merchants to interact with their customers faster using conversation-based commerce tools like (Messenger and WhatsApp).
ExpandCart, which was founded in 2016, is one of the largest e-commerce platform builders in the MENA region, with customers from over 40 countries and a client base of 25,000 merchants who generated over $850 million in GMV through the ExpandCart platform in its current main markets, which include Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates.
With estimates indicating the region’s e-commerce sector has grown at a CAGR of 35 percent over the last five years, studies show that e-commerce will accelerate even further between 2020 and 2022, at a 20 percent CAGR, and then expand at a further 14 percent every year until 2025.
ExpandCart is currently preparing to launch a new financing round dedicated to new market expansion and the development of a comprehensive ecosystem of commerce products and solutions that will help the company acquire new segments of merchants with business needs that go beyond a traditional online store.
Amr Shawqy, Co-founder ExpandCart CEO, said “E-commerce growth has been impressive in the Middle East, and we are proud to be one of the leading players to help millions of businesses go online. With this round, we are committed to being more customer-centric than ever, to build top-class operations, and we will continue to focus on creating the most comprehensive suite of products to help our merchants succeed.”.
Matthias Knobloch, the Managing Partner of Betatron Venture Group, said, “We have been working with Amr and the team at ExpandCart ever since January 2019 and were part of their Pre-A investment round. We’re incredibly excited about the prospect of the e-commerce market in the region and believe ExpandCart will be at the forefront of driving its growth. The Pre-B round will allow the company to further accelerate its business development and set the stage for a larger Series B in 2022.”
Ahmed El Alfi, Co-Founder & Chairman of Sawari Ventures, added, “We are happy to continue supporting ExpandCart alongside a strong set of partner investors who, collectively, believe in the growth potential of ExpandCart and the e-commerce market regionally. We are confident in ExpandCart’s ability to remain a leader in the region by offering services to merchants who have diverse and specific needs to grow their companies.
