Kuwait’s Floward, a flowers and gifts delivery startup, on Wednesday 7 October 2020, announced that it has secured a $2.7 million funding from Impact46, with participation from Faith Capital, BNK, and various regional players.
Launched in 2017 by Abdulaziz Alloughany, Floward through its mobile app and website lets users order flowers and gifts to the users across Kuwait, Saudi Arabia (KSA), UAE, Bahrain and Qatar. According to the company, Floward came as a result of the prominent absence of e-commerce flower delivery in the region with 99% of the industry in GCC used to rely heavily on offline, with a market of $1.3B in the GCC region alone. Prior launching Floward, Alloughany led the foundation of a number of startups.
Speaking of the development for Floward, Abdulaziz Alomran, Founding Partner of Impact46, said,
“Three founders from different backgrounds and different countries came together and dominated the gifting and flowers business over the course of 3 years! This is a Khaliji dream-team. It’s worth noting that Floward ticks all checkboxes Impact46 look for in a startup, a localized-complementary team building a high growth venture in a globally proven market. Leading the round was a decision made based on aligned goals between the two teams.”
The company is planning to launch in 6 more cities in the existing region it is operating into before the year-end. The company claims that every country/city served by Floward service, has marked their name as the preferred online flower destination.
On similar lines, speaking of the goals, Abdulaziz Alloughany, said,
“We have created a playbook that allows us to follow for every new city we launch in.”
The company claims to have grown its current annualized revenue to over $30 million (net revenue). According to Magnitt, the company previously raised $100K in a Pre-Series A round from 500 Startups in May 2019, an undisclosed amount of seed funding from 500 Startups in December 2018, a $3.4 million in February 2017 from Faith Capital, and more undisclosed amount of funding rounds.
