ON Market, an online grocery market, has raised $215,000 from a team of regional angel investors led by Yasser AlGhamdi. The funding will help the startup expand across major cities such as Cairo, Alexandria, Tanta, and Mansoura, as well as scale its tech solutions.
ON Market enables grocery stores with tech solutions to create and sustain online commerce. It was founded in June 2020 in Tanta by Moatasem Marzouk, Seif Yasser, Ahmed Najjar, and Moataz Marzouk, and graduated from the AUC Venture Lab’s acceleration program in 2021.
Simultaneously, they connect customers with nearby grocery retailers via their app, allowing them to place a single order from numerous retailers for the first time in the market.
Moatasem Marzouk, the co-founder and CEO, explains the unique value they provide to their customers, “Our customers have trust and loyalty to brands and retailers that cannot be easily replaceable. We develop our products in-house to connect them with the retailers they trust and love, where they can follow their latest offers, pricing updates, and product availability. For the first time in the market, we allow them to order from multiple stores by placing only one order and getting it delivered all at once. We’ve surveyed a sample of 200+ customers, and we found that 90% of them prefer to get all their orders at once, even if it’ll take more delivery time, even up to an hour”.
Seif Yasser, the co-founder, and Head of Sales speaks about their competitive edge for the retailers’ side saying: “Are we another grocery app? Absolutely not! Unlike most players in the market, we are empowering retailers with tech and business solutions to have online commerce and scale their businesses. As a marketplace, we don’t have warehouses or stock making us more flexible and agile than others to expand and scale. Moreover, our model allows us to have a retailer as a partner in every residential block and neighbourhood, which allows us to deliver a big basket size of up to EGP 1,500 in under 60 minutes only.”
ON Market’s co-founders come from different expertise in e-commerce that dovetails together; software engineering, software product management, business, and sales, at corporates like Google, Volkswagen, and Delivery Hero, as well as, startups and scaleups; like Marsool, WUZZUF, and JustClean.
Moatasem Marzouk also added “by end of 2021, and in only one city, we achieved 10x growth since we started, delivered 20,000 orders with a GMV of EGP 4 million, onboarded 70 retailers, and reached 65% retention rate. We expanded our operations to Nasr City and Masr El Gedida in Feb 2022 and our plan is to expand to Mansoura in Q3 2022, and to Alexandria by Q2 2023, generating $6 million in GMV.”
About how they see their future opportunities in the market, Moatasem says, “the grocery market in Egypt is valued at around $35 billion and expected to grow from 15% to 20% over the next three years. That market isn’t yet fully disrupted, and it’s our chance with ourteam, retailing partners, and investors to change that, before expanding to MENA’s $200 billion markets.”
Yasser Alghamdi, the lead investor, says about the company and the team ”The grocery market in MENA, including Egypt, is promising. We believe the team behind ON Market has the necessary experience and mindset to build a remarkable success story, and we’ll support them to achieve that all of us together”
Influenced by the global market boom in online groceries, the market in Egypt is growing drastically, has attracted more than USD150 million in investments for the year 2021, and is expected to attract more investments in the next coming years.
