Flextock, an Egyptian on-demand logistics platform, has raised $3.25 million just two months after graduating from Y Combinator’s Winter 2021 batch. It is the largest pre-seed round of the Middle East & North Africa.
Participating in the pre-seed round are Foundation Ventures, MSA Capital, CRE Venture Capital, Alter Global, Jameel Investment Management Company, B&Y Venture Partners, Access Bridge Ventures, and Y Combinator. It was also joined by US-based multi-billion-dollar logistics scaleup Flexport, and a number of angel investors from the region.
Flextock plans to use the latest investment to expand to different new markets in the region before the end of the year.
Founded in 2020 by Mohamed Mossaad and Enas Siam, Flextock offers fulfillment solutions to online businesses, in Egypt. Its on-demand warehousing and fulfillment platform takes care of picking up the inventory from businesses, storing it at Flextock’s fulfillment centers, processing the orders, and then shipping them to customers on behalf of the business.
Commenting on the raise, Mohamed Mossaad, the co-founder and CEO of Flextock, said, “Flextock is a purpose-driven company. We are on a mission to enable all merchants, regardless of their size, to efficiently scale their brands. This new funding will help us achieve that. With it, we can turbo-charge our growth by further building our products and hiring a solid team.”
Before founding Flextock, he was the Chief Strategy Officer at Egyptian food ordering and delivery startup Elmenus. Enas Siam, Flextock’s co-founder and COO was previously with Careem – leading (now defunct) Careem Bus in her most recent role. Both the founders have previously also worked in the FMCG sector.
Enas, commenting on the investment, said, “We see a huge opportunity in powering the next generation of commerce in the region by allowing anyone to seamlessly start and grow an online business by leveraging our tech-enabled fulfillment and logistics solutions.”
Alter CEO and Founder, Jesse Sullivan, said, “Our mission is to find and back the world’s top tech founders. Mohamed and Enas are clearly that. Through Flextock, they are igniting growth in the Middle East, which will inspire a rising cohort of entrepreneurs in that ecosystem. They are just the kind of high-character, role model founders we are looking for.”
Mazen Nadim, the Managing Partner of Foundation Ventures, said “We recognize the massive opportunity in logistics presented by the rise of e-commerce in the region. Flextock is building the underlying infrastructure so that any e-commerce player can scale their operations on-demand! We are proud to have been Mossaad and Enas’s first backers and thrilled for the journey ahead.”
