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Cairo-based food discovery and ordering platform, Elmenus, has secured $10 million in a series -C investment round led by the country’s e-payment unicorn Fawry.
Luxor Capital Group, a New York-based hedge fund, and Marakez, a leading Egyptian real estate developer also contributed to the round.
With this deal, the funds raised by the ten-year-old company have reached a total of $ 19.5 million.
“This funding demonstrates the investors’ strong belief in our position in Egypt, and our capability to dominate the market,” Amir Allam, Elmenus CEO, said in a press release.
In 2011, Allam launched Elmenus as a food discovery platform. Over the years, the company scaled up gradually to include delivery and ordering. In 2018, Elmenus introduced its fully automated online ordering system, which today serves 6000 restaurants and caters to 1.5 million users a month.
“By this investment, we show our desire to not only be a payment catalyst but to be a strategic partner to Elmenus, its customers, restaurants and their riders,” said Fawry CEO Ashraf Sabry. “The Egyptian food space has high growth potential, with technology disrupting the status quo, as customers’ needs in food service provision rapidly change.”
According to Statista.com, the revenue from online food delivery business in Egypt is projected to reach $99 million by the end of 2021. The sector is expected to show an annual growth rate of 13.47 percent until the market volume reaches $ 145 million in 2024.
The e-payment pioneer Fawry is also expected to work closely with Elmenus on the development of innovative solutions that can benefit both eateries and consumers, said the release.
The round marks the first investment by the American fund, Luxor Capital Group, in the MENA region. The fund has a long track record of investing in successful food technology companies around the globe namely Indian-multinational Zomato, Berlin-based Deliveryhero and Spanish Glovo.
Elmenus hopes to equip 12,000 restaurants across 20 Egyptian cities with necessary data and tools that can eventually help them scale up their businesses by the end of 2021, read the release. The same funds will be used to open an office in Dubai and to start expanding in Africa in 2022.
(Reporting by Noha El Hennawy; editing by Seban Scaria)
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