EGYPT’S ILLA SECURES $2M AIMED AT DIVERSIFYING ITS OFFERINGS TO THE FMCG VALUE CHAIN
It’s understood a good number of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands often rely on a combination of mixed assets (owned and outsourced) used in carrying delivery operations. Yet, there are concerns over losing significant value in the process of the logistics cycle, and thus, the subject startup position to prevent such. However, it comes as Egypt’s ILLA announced it has secured $2 million in its latest fund-raise aimed at diversifying its offers to FMCGs.
In a bid to breach the losses encountered by FMCGs, the Egyptian startup offers a full-scale delivery solution to corporates and small businesses in the FMCG space, while its latest fundraised is believed to scale growth across Egypt.
Meanwhile, it’s worth noting that the subject startup services are structured for distributors, beverage and food chains, hypermarkets, hotels, manufacturers in addition to other stakeholders involved within the axis of the FMCG industry.
The CEO ‘Mahmoud El-Zomor’ who founded the company in 2019 made clear that: “Having worked for over 15 years in the FMCG industry working with Coca-Cola, Clorox and others, I could see firsthand the kind of fragmentation that exists within logistics operations for big-name FMCG brands, and that called for a better approach than the existing solutions”.
Based on this, he figured out the need for such services, hence, the CEO teamed up with his co-founders – Alaa Jarkas, Hossam Saraya, and Ahmed Sakr – believed to have some background in the industry needed to build ILLA.
In a bid to ensure that existing frictions between the brands and logistics suppliers are reduced to their lowest, its complete visibility of operations is assured via the company’s unified platform coupled with a centralized operations team that handles average-mile logistics delivery for FMCGs.
Meanwhile, since the ILLA launch in 2019, the startup has completed over 250,000 transactions from more than 65 clients, which include Nestlé, Coca-Cola, P&G, Juhayna, Danone, and PepsiCo. While in the meantime, the company is poised to target the FMCG logistics head-on as it disrupts Egypt’s market while focusing on a global scale where fragmentation in the supply chain is a $1 trillion market.
“That focus on the industry affords us leverage to dig deep into the problem and find solutions from within, that and the unique nature of delivery specific to FMCG gives us room for innovation that others cannot afford”, the startup’s director said.
Equally, the CEO also noted that ILLA is poised to “disrupt the traditional route-to-market for FMCG companies and SMEs while building more around its tech platform to deliver more value to its clients and drivers alike”, as it plans to use the latest fund to accelerate growth in Egypt TechCrunch have learned.
The latest round of investment was led by Watheeq Financial Services and Golden Palm Investments. Which also saw the participation of Kepple Africa Fund, Loftyinc Capital Management, AUC Angels, Cubit Ventures, Oqal Angel Network, and Flat6Labs Cairo – notably the accelerator’s third time investing in the subject company.
In view of this, ‘Khaled Zaidan’ of Watheeq Financial Services said, “With the onset of Covid, the global supply chain management industry is suitable for modernization, and ILLA is uniquely positioned as an end-to-end execution platform”.
In the same vein, a partner at Golden Palm ‘AJ Okereke’ added, “Middle-mile logistics is one of the most underinvested segments of the global supply chain market. ILLA has identified this massive opportunity in MENA and is offering a full-stack B2B supply chain management platform enabling FMCG brands to reach retailers directly at the lowest cost per case. Mahmoud and team are utilizing the trucking logistics share economy and tech automation to innovate within a large and fast-growing market”.
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