Investors update: August 8 2023 - Beko on track to open its $100m factory in Egypt

Beko on track to open its $100m factory in Egypt

Highlights

• Beko Egypt is getting ready to open its first plant in the industrial city, with investments surpassing $100 million, to produce home appliances such as refrigerators and ovens.
• The announcement came during the Minister of Trade and Industry Ahmed Samir’s visit to Türkiye, where he expressed Egypt’s keenness to expand bilateral trade volume from $10 billion to $15 billion within five years.
• The company targets starting production by the end of 2023 with a capacity of 1.5 million devices per year, 60% of which will be exported to Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, with an estimated annual export potential of $250 million.

Source: Zawya

Our Takeaway

With a workforce of over 7 million people and a strategic location at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa, Egypt has become a hub for manufacturing and trade in the Middle East and Africa. The manufacturing sector is diverse, with a range of industries, and keeps drawing in more players. Recent devaluations have made Egyptian exports more competitive, as the lower value of the currency makes products cheaper for foreign buyers, while the government has also implemented a range of policies and initiatives—such as the creation of special economic zones—that creates opportunities for businesses to increase exports.

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B2B pharma marketplace Grinta acquires Auto-Cure

Highlights

• Cairo-based B2B pharmaceutical marketplace, Grinta, has acquired its counterpart Auto-Cure for an undisclosed value. Founded in 2020, the latter offers a multi-vendor marketplace where pharmacies in Alexandria can purchase products and restock their inventory.
• This is the second acquisition for Grinta after buying PH Store, which also works along the same vertical. Since then, the company has been able to serve over 7,000 pharmacies and delivered over 200,000 orders.   
• Both acquisitions come on the back of a $8 million seed round—closed last November and co-led by Raed Ventures and Nclude, with participation from Endeavor Catalyst and 500 Global—to accelerate its expansion in Egypt.

Source: Wamda

Our Takeaway

The market opportunity to serve community pharmacies across Africa is significant; the Middle East and Africa’s pharma market is said to be worth around $100 billion. Like Grinta, there is an increasing number of health tech startups that are streamlining the pharmaceutical sector across the continent, serving serve businesses and individual customers in an industry that has for decades remained fragmented, leading to frequent stock unavailability, quality concerns, and unstable pricing. These include PharmacyMarts, Chefaa, Vezeeta, mPharma, Lifestores, and Drugstoc.

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Egypt’s Talents Arena raises $750,000 pre-seed round

Highlights

• Egypt-based AI recruitment company Talents Arena has raised a $750,000 pre-seed funding round from UI Investments, alongside several Saudi and regional angel investors.
• Founded in 2019 by Aya Elgebeely, Talents Arena uses an AI-powered hiring engine to help organizations hire talent by fully automating the recruitment life cycle.
• The Flat6Labs portfolio company plans to use the new funds to fuel its expansion plans into Saudi Arabia and the GCC. 

Source: Techpoint Africa

Our Takeaway

In Africa, startups digitizing the administrative stack for businesses have a big market opportunity considering the growing appetite for enterprise software solutions among medium-to-large organizations on the continent. For Talents Arena, however, its opportunity lies in the ~6 million unfulfilled jobs in the Middle East and Africa region due to IT recruiters and HR professionals struggling to find the best match for their openings—a problem caused by traditionally long hiring process, rapid tech innovations, and fierce competition for high-caliber technology candidates.