Egyptian startup Homzmart, the Middle East’s leading furniture and home goods marketplace platform, has closed a US$15 million Series A funding round to help it speed up its already impressive growth.
Hard-launched in early 2020 by Mahmoud Ibrahim and Ibrahim Mohamed, is a digital platform connecting home goods and furniture manufacturers and brands with end consumers.
Homzmart’s platform and its end-to-solutions enable both retailers, including the likes of IKEA and Home Centre by helping them easily reach customers, and consumers who have a hassle-free, one-stop-shop shopping experience, with greater choice and flexible financing options.
Its easy-to-navigate platform incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) to optimise furniture sellers’ content, with intelligent tools helping customers with purchasing decisions. The startup has grown sales by a multiple of 30 in the last 12 months, showcasing over 55,000 products from thousands of brands and merchants, and is now planning to expand across the MENA region after securing the US$15 million Series A funding round.
The capital raise was led by MSA Capital, a global investment firm with over US$1.5 billion in assets under management, and Nuwa Capital. Other participating investors include Rise Capital, Impact46, EQ2 Ventures, and Outliers Ventures. The investment takes Homzmart’s total raised capital to a total of US$17.2 million.
“We have seized the opportunity to digitise shopping for furniture and home goods. The market opportunity in the region is huge, and our business model is perfectly set up for it. Homzmart provides an easy one-stop-shop platform to transform the experience for furniture sellers and consumers, and we are very excited about our next stage of growth,” said Homzmart’s chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder Mahmoud Ibrahim.
“We are delighted to complete this funding round. It will accelerate our progress to expand regionally and execute our strategy of consolidating the whole value chain. I would like to thank all our investors for their support.”
MSA Capital general partner Ben Harburg said the COVID-19 pandemic had exposed the extreme vulnerabilities and inefficiencies of the Middle East’s archaic offline retail ecosystem, logistics, and supply chain.
“Into the void stepped Homzmart as the next generation, digitally-enabled online marketplace and optimised logistics provider for large item retail addressing both consumer and enterprise customers,” he said.
“Mahmoud and his team’s executional excellence, born out of deep experience managing ecommerce and fulfilment in challenging conditions with Jumia and Daraz, and guided by Chinese best practices from Alibaba, has resulted in a firm that has rapidly become the dominant online marketplace, fulfilment, and finance facilitator for all merchants and brands in the region.”
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