The Capital Quest | PE firm Silver Lake signs VC-stage cheque for MaxAB in debut Africa bet

On Oct 19, 2022

Cairo-based B2B ecommerce platform MaxAB, which serves food and grocery retailers and last year raised a record amount in a Series A round led by RMBV, has now closed a $40 million pre-Series B equity round.

It raised the money from Silver Lake, British International Investment (BII), and DisruptAD, the venture platform of Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund ADQ.

Existing investors Beco Capital, 4DX Ventures, Flourish Ventures and Africa Platform Capital chipped in, too.

The transaction marks the debut Africa investment by US-based private equity firm Silver Lake. The tech-focused firm invested in MaxAB as part of a long-term partnership it formed two years ago with Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala.

This round brings the Egyptian company’s total funding to more than $100 million so far. This includes its $6.2 million seed round in September 2019 and $40 million Series A round last year, followed by an additional $15 million from existing backers last year.

El-Megharbel, a former Careem executive, had joined hands with former Aramex executive Mohamed Ben Halim to start MaxAB four years ago. Ben Halim is also the company’s COO.

It serves a network of traditional retailers across Egypt, offering on-demand delivery and other value-added services. The company says suppliers benefit from MaxAB’s supply chain solutions and business intelligence tools that allow them to predict, monitor and control the impact of their strategies in real time.

Since launching in 2018, MaxAB’s e-commerce business has served approximately 150,000 unique traditional retailers, delivering 2.5 million orders while maintaining an industry-leading delivery success rate. Last year it began rolling out its fintech solutions across its merchant base with the goal of digitising the flow of cash, transitioning MaxAB into a one-stop shop for traditional retailers.

The new investment will enhance MaxAB’s plans for further geographic expansions to see full geographical coverage of Morocco by the end of 2023 and entry into Saudi Arabia.

The new capital will also be deployed by MaxAB to finance further growth in the e-commerce arm of its business, expand its technology and product teams, and further scale the fintech arm by offering a wider range of embedded finance solutions.

Last year, MaxAB acquired the Morocco-based B2B e-commerce and distribution platform WaystoCap, expanding its services to the Maghreb.