The Middle East and Northern Africa are expected to spend $47 billion on on-demand delivery by 2030. Many platforms operate in various categories of e-commerce and logistics while servicing businesses and customers in Egypt, the country’s largest and fastest-growing economy.
Egyptian Dark Store Business Yalla Fel Sekka, a firm that aims to develop a network of dark shops and micro-warehouses across Egypt, has raised $7 million in a Series A investment. DisruptAD, ADQ’s venture platform, led this fundraising round.
It’s one of the motivations behind the creation of Yalla Fel Sekka by Mahdavi and Yasmine Abdel Karim. According to the creators, YFS has established an evenly distributed network of small mini-warehouses and dark shops, where businesses may store items extremely close to consumers to assure speedy delivery, after spotting a major need in the regional market: the demand for near-instant deliveries using dark stores.
Dark stores are a strategy to assist merchants prosper in the qCommerce, or ‘quick commerce’ age, as they become more incapable of understanding the risk of supply chain interruptions in the face of increased pressure for on-demand delivery.
In a nutshell, here’s how the platform works. It’s a B2B2C delivery logistics process in which the firm interacts with a client’s backend, such as a supermarket, so that anytime a consumer places an online purchase, the company picks them up from a dark store designed to retain its clients’ merchandise and delivers it.
The software also offers fleet management, as well as dark store and micro-warehouse management, to businesses in a variety of industries, including grocery, pharmacies, and e-commerce.
“Being able to marry operational excellence and innovation with the technology to bring down your cost and have productivity gains is what sets us apart,” said Khashayar Mahdavi, co-founder and chief strategy officer.
Yalla Fel Sekka has 1,000 active drivers of motorbikes and vans, with over 3,000 on a waiting list. According to CEO Yasmine Abdel Karim, these drivers complete 10,000 orders every day, and the company’s gross merchandise volume is rising at a monthly pace of 20%, with a customer retention rate of over 90%.
The company has also accomplished two million deliveries in 18 months throughout five Egyptian cities — Cairo, Giza, Alexandria, Mansoura, and Tanta — all while maintaining a positive gross margin.
Millions of Egyptian small companies are only getting their feet wet online. However, executing orders remains a struggle for the majority of them. Although it has mostly serviced large clients such as Spinneys Egypt, Vezeeta, Jumia Egypt, and noon, Yalla Fel Sekka views this category as its next wave of consumers.
The two-year-old firm utilizes unique data-driven technology to exceed customer expectations and provide the only dependable and economical fast delivery solution for companies in Egypt’s metropolitan areas. Through its skilled operations staff and steady efficiency gains, the start-up has become the country’s top distributor in the field, resulting in a high utilization rate.
The additional financing will be used to extend Yalla Fel Sekka’s presence in cities across Egypt and the MENA region. According to Yasmine Abdel Karim, the firm would also improve its dark store management as it plans to open 20 to 40 dark stores this year.
Source Links:
Egypt’s Yalla Fel Sekka raises $7 million Series A – Wamda
Egyptian start-up Yalla Fel Sekka raises $7m in a round led by ADQ’s DisruptAD (thenationalnews.com)
