Egyptian mass e-commerce startup Kenzz raises $3.5m seed funding round

Egyptian mass e-commerce startup Kenzz has raised a US$3.5 million seed funding round to help it recruit talent, widen its product range, and invest in technology.

Founded this year by Ahmed Atef, Mahmoud AlSilk and Moataz Sami, Kenzz is a mass e-commerce solution that brings reliable online shopping to the mass market in Egypt, the Middle East and Africa. 

The startup’s customer-centric platform aims to digitise the offline experience, making it exciting, fun and sociable for users – across all customer touchpoints – while providing discounts of up to 65 per cent. 

The US$3.5 million seed round is led by Outliers Venture Capital, a venture capital fund backing early-stage outlier founders in the US and MENA; HOF Capital, a global technology investment firm; Foundation Ventures; Samurai Incubate; and other investors, including angels.

Proceeds will be used to continue to recruit leading talent; grow product categories and assemble a wide variety of products to meet different consumer segments’ preferences and tastes; to invest in technology; and shortly launch its new app.

“We are delighted to complete this seed fund raise, and we thank all our investors for their support. The time is ripe to fully optimise e-commerce in Egypt and MENA. We have designed Kenzz to appeal specifically to people not yet convinced that e-commerce is a practical and mainstream mode of shopping. We are revolutionising the shopping experience to deliver relevancy, convenience, trust and value, and look forward to the future with great confidence,” Atef said.

Sarah AlSaleh, partner at Outliers Venture Capital, said Kenzz was solving two key issues that current e-commerce incumbents were not addressing – affordable and reliable last mile logistics and an uncompromising customer trust philosophy. 

“The diversity and depth of Kenzz’s founding team strongly positions them to combine a multitude of experiences and expertise into creating a category-defining company and e-commerce champion for Egypt,” she said.