Egypt-based mass e-commerce startup Kenzz, has announced the raise of $3.5 million in seed funding. The seed fundraising was led by Outliers Venture Capital, HOF Capital, Foundation Ventures, Samurai Incubate, and some angel investors.
Founded in 2022, Kenzz provides e-commerce solutions to help platforms digitize the offline experience. Its model involves sourcing products directly from manufacturers and importers and offering consumers deeper discounts when they share/buy with friends and family.
The company disclosed that the new funds raised will be used to recruit new talents, grow product categories, invest in technology, and launch its new app as it seeks to deepen e-commerce adoption in Egypt.
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Speaking on the recent funds raised, the Chief executive officer of Kenzz Ahmed Atef said, “We are going after a completely different segment that Amazon and the big platforms are not looking at as they are centralized in big cities and towards the people who are comfortable buying online.
“What we’re doing is bringing that experience much closer to the masses and building a reliable, trustworthy e-commerce platform that caters specifically for the mass market, solving for the barriers to buying, whether it’s trust, affordability and relevance, while capitalizing on social engagement and social interaction aspects of e-commerce.”
Kenzz mass e-commerce solution is taking a B2C approach as it removes the middleman/resellers, while it sources products directly from local manufacturers and offers them to consumers.
Through this approach, consumers know the exact brand selling to them. The platform also gives consumers discounts of up to 65% when they make collective purchases with friends and family.
According to the CEO, sourcing directly from manufacturers and importers enables it to secure the best deals for consumers, and the group buying feature facilitates more referrals, bringing down its customer acquisition costs. Group orders can also be sent to single locations to reduce consumer delivery fees and logistics costs for Kenzz.
The CEO of Kenzz also stated that the company model helps stakeholders on the other end local manufacturers and SMEs by providing data on what consumers want and access to such consumers among additional insights.
Although, the startup is yet to launch fully into the market as it is fine-tuning offerings to meet consumers’ demand, which, according to Atef, was grand when the platform soft-launched for two months.
On the other hand, Africa has been forecasted to surpass half a billion ecommerce users by 2025, which will have shown a steady 17% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of online consumers for the market.
Fashion and electronics products have been reported to create the highest sales revenues among online shoppers in African markets, with fashion products predicted to reach $13.4 billion USD in sales and electronics predicted to reach #11.2 billion USD in annual sales by 2025.