Leading e-commerce platform in North Africa and the Middle East, ExpandCart has raised $2.7 million in a Pre-Series B bridge round led by Betatron Venture Group.
The funding round also saw participation from existing investors like; Agility Ventures from Kuwait and Sawari Ventures from Egypt.
The new round of funding is designed to facilitate ExpandCart growth in current markets while focusing on maximizing technology building, R&D, and new products to enable 1 million merchants across the Men region within the next three years using multiple products such as their new feature, ExpandBox, a conversational commerce chatbot solution, which enables merchants to interact directly with their customers via conversation-based commerce tools like (WhatsApp and Messenger) without increasing their headcount.
Statistics show that over the last 5 years, the e-commerce market in the region has grown at a CAGR of 35%, and studies show that between 2020 and 2022, there’s a possibility of a larger acceleration in e-commerce at 20% CAGR, and further growth of 14% per annum until 2025.
ExpandCart is currently gearing up to launch its new financing round, which will be directed toward developing a comprehensive ecosystem of commerce solutions and products, as also facilitate new market expansion which will help the company acquire a new set of merchants with business needs that transcends a traditional online store.
Amr Shawqy, co-founder and CEO, ExpandCart said “The growth of E-commerce in the Middle East has been impressive, and we are happy and proud to be one of the leading players helping millions of businesses go online.
With this round, we are committed to being as customer-centric as possible, to build top-class operations, and we will keep our focus on creating the most comprehensive set of products to enable our merchants to succeed.”
Managing Partner of Betatron Venture Group, Matthias Knobloch said, “We have been working with the team at ExpandCart since January 2019 and we were also participants in their Pre-A investment round.
We’re incredibly enthusiastic about the prospect of the e-commerce market in the region and we believe ExpandCart will be a leading force in driving its growth.
The Pre-B round will enable the company further accelerate its business development and also set the stage for a larger Series B in 2022.”
Ahmed El Alfi, Chairman and Co-founder of Sawari Ventures, added that they are happy to continue rendering support to ExpandCart alongside other strong partner investors who, collectively, believe in the potential of ExpandCart and the growth of the e-commerce market regionally.
“We are confident in ExpandCart’s ability to maintain its leading position in the region, offering services to merchants who have diverse and specific needs to grow their companies.”
ExpandCart, founded in 2016, is one of the largest e-commerce platforms in the MENA region with a client base of 25,000 merchants and customers from over 40 countries who managed to achieve more than $850 million in GMV through the ExpandCart platform from its current main markets.
The cloud e-commerce platform has native Arabic support and enables businesses and individuals to create a professional online shop in minutes without the need for any technical assistance as they can create an account themselves.
Techbuild’s Take
Looking back at the previous series A funding secured by ExpandCart which was used to double down on digital commerce solutions, targeting both online and offline retailers, while also reducing the gap between suppliers and merchants in the Middle East, we believe that this recent funding would be geared toward its intended goal.
ExpandCart has succeeded in building a roadmap of new innovative solutions that has helped supercharge e-commerce growth in the Middle East, little wonder it’s got the support of both old and new investors and secured this Pre-B funding.
The e-commerce market in the Middle East is one of the fastest-growing e-commerce markets in the entire world.
While it is still not as developed or complex as the markets in the United States or Europe, the region is experiencing a market boom and with the presence of cloud e-commerce platforms like ExpandCart, the market is set to be side by side with other developed markets across the globe.
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