ⓘ Featured image: Hossam M. Ali Co-founder & CEO of Fatura
Egypt-based Fatura, a B2B e-commerce platform that connects FMCG wholesalers to retailers and a digital lending platform for small merchants, has reportedly raised a 7-figure investment in a seed round led by Disruptech, which is Egypt’s first fintech-centric VC Fund, launched by Mohamed Okasha, co-founder of Fawry. Other investors who participated in the funding round for Fatura were EFG EV, and Cairo Angels.
Fatura was founded last year by Hossam Ali, Ahmed Anwar, and Abdullah Mohebeldin. Later, Ahmed Al Bakary, ex-CEO of BiscoMisr and Massfood joined the company as the non-executive chairman of the board.
What distinguishes Fatura from other players in the market, is its unique asset-light business model. Fatura leverages the underutilized assets already owned by wholesalers and uses technology to resolve existing supply chain inefficiencies for all relevant stakeholders including retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers.
Commenting on the investment round, Hossam in a statement said,
“Egypt has more than 5,000 wholesalers, investing heavily to build another one will not solve the inefficiencies that currently exist in the relationship between wholesalers and retailers. This capital-intensive approach never made sense to us in light of the Egyptian market’s realities. Instead, we are on a mission to curate a network of 200-250 wholesalers across the country, digitally transform the way they work, and enable them to collectively lead the FMCG distribution business nationally,”
Besides providing a one-stop-shop offering of more than 1,500 available SKUs, Fatura is on its way to offer working capital loans to its retailers leveraging the data derived from transactions to analyze retailers’ behaviour and creditworthiness. Speaking of which, Ahmed Anwar, Co-founder & COO of Fatura in a statement said,
“around 60% of the current wholesale market in Egypt is through on-credit purchases. We will be the first player to unlock the opportunity of digitizing the lending cycle.”
Talking about the key proposition of Fatura, Ahmed Al Bakary said,
“I have more than 25 years of experience in the industry and I have to say that throughout those years, the wholesale-retail link has been a black box in the industry that has never been opened. Nobody knows who sells what, where and at what cost. Fatura is stepping up to regulate this chaos”
Mohamed El Sayed Okasha, Managing Partner at Disruptech shared his vision for Fatura,
“We are excited to lead Fatura’s investment round and we firmly believe in the opportunity that lies in the digitization of the wholesale-retail relationship. Disruptech sees Fatura playing an essential role to transform the market and we are committed to helping Fatura achieve its mission.”
