EGYPT – Egypt’s main food-delivery app elmenus has received an investment from the former Chief Executive Officer of Just Eat, David Buttress.

David, who led the London-based company from 2013 to 2017 before its merger with Takeaway.com, has invested a “relatively significant” sum in the Egyptian app, and will be joining its board, bringing decades of immense entrepreneurial and investment experience to the company.

“Elmenus’ exponential growth this past year has been quite remarkable. It has been owning the food discovery approach, making it the stronger partner to restaurants as it provides them with more than just online ordering services. It is an exciting time in the company’s evolution,” he said.

The Middle East and North Africa’s online food delivery market was worth more than US$3 billion in 2020 with some 22.7 million users.

elmenus

Buoyed with the new capital injection, over the course of the next few months, elmenus will scale its offering further, expand its market share, and enhance its social and personalised dish discovery experience, with 4000 new drivers to be recruited.

The service with more than 1.5 million monthly users in the North African country has benefited like many of its peers worldwide from a surge in food orders as Covid-19 keeps people home.

The food ordering platform, which has about 20% of the market, saw revenue triple last year as the pandemic spurred more restaurants to outsource deliveries. It targets 10-fold growth in 2021, reports Bloomberg.

The Middle East and North Africa’s online food delivery market was worth more than US$3 billion in 2020 with some 22.7 million users, according to data cited by elmenus.

Founded in 2011 by Amir Allam, elmenus had initially started as a food discovery platform with the aim to help users discover restaurants and menus online.

But after raising a US$1.5 million Series A led by Algebra Ventures in 2017, the company, in 2018, pivoted its product into an online food ordering service, with restaurants delivering the orders.

Meanwhile, Tayary, an Egyptian online logistics and delivery platform, has secured pre-seed investment from AUC Angels, Alex Angels, and Cairo Angels.

The funding will be deployed towards expanding geographically, growing the team and launching extensive marketing efforts in order to increase the clients they serve over the next year.

Launched in 2017, Tayary is a multifaceted online platform that facilitates order delivery through both B2B and B2C models.

The Alexandria-based startup has developed its own order-tracking feature in-house, allowing businesses and individuals to send and receive deliveries in an affordable and efficient manner.

The startup’s current services include online food ordering, B2B delivery services, and grocery and pharmacy deliveries, reports Disrupt.

“At Tayary, we work hard to maintain a solid user experience. Along with our vendor partners, we ensure that a wide variety of restaurant choices are available to our users,” said Amr Abdelfattah, chief executive officer (CEO) of the company.

“We continue to strive to provide more delivery solutions to a wider range of user base, both to B2B and B2C,” he added.

In 2019, the startup released its own vendor on-demand delivery app, which enables restaurants to access riders in their vicinity to complete orders.

They serve a wide range of business starting from multinationals like McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Hardee’s to single local restaurants.

Further growth was witnessed during the lockdown initiated in Q2 of 2020, when Tayary launched an additional on-demand courier service, Tayary Go, to help clients run errands while staying safe.

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