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The Egyptian social commerce platform, Brimore, has closed a Series-A funding round of $25 million.
The round was led by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Endure Capital. Egypt’s leading e-payment gateway, Fawry also participated in the funding along with Flourish and Endeavor Catalyst Fund, the company said in a statement to the media.
The company was founded in 2017 by Mohamed Abdul Aziz and Ahmed Sheikha as a social distribution platform that harnesses a mobile application to allow local suppliers to penetrate the market through a network of individual distributors.
According to the company’s website, 92 percent of its sellers are stay-at-home mothers looking for a source of income.
To its users, Brimore promises custom solutions of online and offline sales channels.
The company, whose revenues increased 400 times over the last three years, has so far secured a network of almost 75, 000 resellers that cover 27 Egyptian cities. With seventy percent of its suppliers based outside Greater Cairo, Brimore’s operations have a special focus on rural and remote areas.
“In the past three years, we’ve focused on building a smart and reliable infrastructure that enables the masses to do their commerce businesses, wherever they are, and whatever they have,” said Mohamed Abdulaziz, Brimore’s CEO and Co-Founder.
“We’ll be using the fresh fund to scale our infrastructure, enabling many more people to continue their journey of 50x growth by 2023, and opening this gate of hope and opportunity to other people in African markets,” he added.
The company plans to use the funds to grow its network of sellers and to double its current 800 employees within a year.
With the aim of becoming Africa’s leading social commerce app, Brimore will also use the funds to expand into three African countries by 2023, said the release
The deal marks the first time the IFC invests in social commerce globally, read the release.
“This is our largest direct investment in social commerce so far,” said Walid Labadi, IFC’s country manager for Egypt. “IFC’s co-lead investment in Brimore aims to help the platform continue to democratize access to e-commerce, increase economic opportunities for women, and support the development of the local manufacturing sector in the country.”
The company’s existing investors including Algebra Ventures, Disruptech, Khawarizmi Ventures and Vision Ventures also contributed to this funding round.
“We came in on the first round of investment and invested in every subsequent round, to ensure that the growth momentum stays on track,” said Tarek Assaad, Managing Partner at Algebra Ventures.
(Reporting by Noha El Hennawy, editing by Seban Scaria)
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