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Tuesday, 2 November 2021

Delivery startup ShipBlu secures USD 2.4 mn seed round

Last mile delivery startup ShipBlu raised USD 2.4 mn in a seed round led by Saudi Arabia’s Nama Ventures, according to TechCrunch. Though the company did not specify how the funds would be deployed, co-founder Ali Nasser told the tech outlet that he wants ShipBlu’s network and infrastructure to span 99% of Egypt within the next couple of months.

This is the company’s second capital injection in recent months: ShipBlu graduated from Y Combinator’s summer round in August, where it was one of four Egyptian startups to secure USD 125k in seed funding from the US accelerator. The other startups include ins. marketplace Amenli, SaaS startup Pylon and online auto-marketplace Odiggo.

What does ShipBlu do? Founded by Nasser, Ahmed ElKawass and Abdelrahman Hosny last year, the company aims to provide “Amazon-level” logistics to online businesses looking to store and send their goods. It signed on more than 40 merchants in its first month, and has since doubled its client list and tripled its revenue, Nasser told TechCrunch without giving hard numbers.

OTHER STARTUP NEWS –

Taager invests in Pakistani startup Zarya: Egyptian social commerce startup Taager joined a number of regional and global VCs in a USD 1.7 mn pre-seed round held by Lahore-based B2B ecommerce platform Zarya. Like Taager and fellow Egyptian startup Brimore, Zarya is a social selling company that allows users to source different products and sell them over its network. In July Taager secured USD 6.4 mn in seed investment from a number of VCs and angel investors, while Brimore closed a USD 3.5 mn pre-series A round in May 2020.

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