Egypt's tech start-up OneOrder raises $3m to boost technology and operations

Latest funding brings total capital raised so far to $10.5m

Tamer Amer (L), co-founder and chief executive of OneOrder, and Karim Maurice, co-founder and chief technology officer of the company. Photo: OneOrder

Egyptian logistics and technology start-up OneOrder has raised $3 million in a new funding round that will help the company to boost its in-house operations and core technology.

The funding round was led by Nclude, an investment platform focused primarily on FinTech innovation.

Egypt-based early-stage venture capital firm A15 and Delivery Hero Ventures, a fund backed by global food delivery giant Delivery Hero, also participated in the latest round.

OneOrder will use the fresh capital to boost its tech talent, in-house operations, increase sales, improve its market share and proprietary technology, it said in a statement on Monday.

The company will also “deploy additional capital into scaling its offline presence and expand its warehouse footprint” across Egypt and the Middle East and North Africa region.

“Aside [from] improving efficiency, we are reducing costs and impacting restaurants’ bottom lines,” said Tamer Amer, co-founder and chief executive of OneOrder.

“Joined by prominent global investors with deep knowledge and extensive expertise in our sector, we look forward to our next phase of rapid growth.”

Founded in October 2021, OneOrder aims to address inefficiencies and structural problems faced by restaurants when sourcing supplies, such as inconsistent prices, unreliable quality and irregular delivery timings.

The company's platform allows restaurant owners to interact with a number of small, fragmented suppliers and vendors from whom they source their products, including meat, vegetables and equipment.

The latest funding has brought the total capital raised so far by the company to $10.5 million.

OneOrder is using technology to solve the supply chain pain points in Egypt’s $40 billion hotel, restaurant and catering (HoReCa) market, such as lack of product availability, price fluctuations, product consistency, on-time and accurate delivery and a lack of working capital financing, it said.

The start-up aims to use artificial intelligence and machine-learning technology to ensure restaurants are never out of stock during both high and low-season, and eliminate waste.

“The explosive growth of the business in the last year is testament to the huge value that OneOrder’s industry-focused solution has been able to generate for its HoReCa customers,” said Brendon Blacker, managing partner of Delivery Hero Ventures, who joined OneOrder’s board.

In Egypt, the most populous country in the Arab world, OneOrder has a total addressable market of 400,000 restaurants that on aggregate spend $40 billion annually, the company said. Due to the lack of vertically integrated supply chains, these restaurants spend between 6 per cent and 7 per cent of their revenue to ensure supply chain stability.

Venture capital funding in Egypt more than doubled to $307 million in the first half of this year from a year earlier, ranking it third in the Mena region, according to start-up data platform Magnitt.

The number of deals in the country grew by 22 per cent annually to 78 during the first six months of the year, it said.