Egyptian social commerce company Brimore, founded by Mohamed Abdulaziz and Ahmed Sheikha in 2017, has raised $25 million in a Series A round co-led by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Endure Capital. The Series A financing round also witnessed participation from Fawry, Endeavor Catalyst Fund, Algebra Ventures, Disruptech and Vision Ventures.
“Brimore is Africa’s 1st and fastest-growing social commerce and parallel distribution channel. We provide emerging brands with nationwide coverage through a network of individual sellers. 92% of our sellers are women and mostly stay-at-home mothers looking for a decent income opportunity. Our sellers cover all 27 governorates of Egypt with 70% of them outside of Greater Cairo. We partner with more than 300 suppliers offering a wide range of products in multiple categories”, according to information on its website.
Brimore has managed to position itself as one of the leading brands in Egypt and is slowly working its way into the whole of Africa. According to co-founder Mohamed Abdulaziz “We started working on Brimore with the mindset of actually manufacturing products ourselves. However, producing our products wasn’t the wisest decision at that time as it was a very asset-heavy model. So we started scaling with listing different products. And at the same time, it was very insightful to see how the network formed on the other side. From a seller perspective, we started onboarding more and more sellers. Most of them happen to be women.”
Using Brimore’s eponymous platform, small and medium-scale suppliers and/or sellers can provide individuals with “fresh” products while enjoying benefits that provide them with extra money, convenience and flexibility.
Brimore says it has experienced growth of about 400 percent in revenue since it started. It also boasts of over 300 suppliers with around 8,000 different stock keeping units (SKUs) from processed food, personal care, household goods, etc. The platform has 75,000 sellers (74 percent of them are women) present in 27 cities around Egypt.
Co-founder Ahmed Sheikha who also doubles as Chief Business and Investment Officer explained that “We are building a smart and reliable infrastructure and a full ecosystem that enable masses to do commerce. So anyone– with a shop or a stay at home mom–can do commerce business with Brimore either online or offline”.
Brimore has big goals. According to CEO Mohamed Abdulaziz “We want to crack the concept of go-to market in Africa. We know that Africa is like 54 different markets with distinct dynamics of every market. Our vision is if we crack the concept of go-to-market through people and reaching the online and offline and the component of trust all together, towards the new age of commerce, the cross border trade will be our next thing. Anyone can produce anything can sell anywhere because we enable the hard part about market access”. It also plans on introducing financial products in the future.
Brimore wants to grow by 50 times in Egypt in the next few years. The funds it acquired from the round will be geared towards growth, expanding its logistics and operational infrastructure, hiring talents, increasing product catalogues, etc.
