Egypt-based logistics startup OneOrder said that it has raised $1 million in its latest funding round, led by venture capital firm A15. The startup aims to use the new fund to improve supply chain inefficiencies and expand its customer base.
OneOrder was founded by the CEO Tamer Amer, who is also the founder of two restaurants chains – Fuego Sushi and Longhorn Texas BBQ – and the CTO Karim Maurice, who is also the founder of Cube Egypt and Bitroot, a “CTO-as-a-Service” for early-stage ventures. OneOrder is a tech-enabled restaurant supplier giving the food and beverages industry in Egypt an opportunity to get all their supplies from one place via an app and web-based platform.
The startup platform tries to address the structural problem faced by Egyptian restaurants that regularly interact with a number of small, fragmented suppliers and vendors from whom they source their meat, vegetables, and equipment, which may lead to inconsistent and non-transparent pricing, unreliable quality, and irregular delivery timing, with supplies, often late, limiting restaurants daily menu offerings.
“Egypt restaurant industry and the challenges it faces caused by a fragmented supply chain made the restaurant owners need, a timely supply of quality goods, at a consistent price without the stress of managing various suppliers on a daily basis,” said Tamer Amer, founder, and CEO of OneOrder.
“In Egypt, the restaurant business has to constantly navigate hundreds of suppliers on a monthly basis to source products, and the downside to this model is that you must create your own physical warehouses and stock up on many products to hedge the risk of sudden shortages and outages of much-needed supplies and this process burden restaurants with unnecessary overheads and costs,” he added. “In addition to the cost, it is a tremendous burden that consumes significant time and resources that restaurant owners would otherwise be able to invest in other areas.”
The food and beverage market in Egypt has been witnessing significant growth recently, as the country has 45,000 registered restaurants, and as many as 250,000 unregistered outlets, which are all-consuming supplies, according to OneOrder.
In 2019, the United States Department of Agriculture estimated the overall food and beverages/hospitality market in Egypt at $13 billion, with OneOrder expecting that figure to have increased substantially since then.
Rating agency Fitch Ratings forecasts a 5.3% rise in gross domestic product for Egypt between 2021 and 2023, driven by strong private consumption and the growing tourism sector. In addition, the country is building new cities, with hotels and commerce expanding across the country, which is favorable for the sector.
