Egyptian e-commerce platform Kenzz secures $3.5 million in seed funding

Kenzz, an e-commerce platform bringing shopping to the mass market in Egypt and MENA, has raised $3.5 million in seed funding. The round was led by Outliers Ventures, a U.S.-based and MENA-focused venture capital firm.

Founded in February 2022 by Ahmed Atef, Mahmoud Al Silk and Moataz Sami, the startup disclosed that it will use the seed round to grow its product categories, widen the product categories on its platform, hire talent and invest in tech as it launches its app.

In Egypt, online shoppers mainly purchase items on big e-commerce platforms such as Souq, which rebranded as Amazon Egypt in 2021, Jumia, and Noon or social commerce platforms that utilize Facebook pages and groups in a B2B2C manner.

However, this model is mainly focused on the three largest cities in Egypt, Cairo, Alexandria, and Giza, to the detriment of the mass market, while smaller social platforms tend to provide unreliable and unorganized service.

Thus, Kenzz was built to fill in the lapses from the two models: make products available to the mass market and offer them in an organized manner.

Kenzz is yet to launch fully into the market as it is fine-tuning offerings to meet consumers’ demand, which was grand when the platform soft-launched for two months.

According to the company's CEO, thousands of customers used the platform within this timeframe, with 50% ordering from outside Egypt’s big cities.