How Cartona is Transforming Egypt’s Retail Market with Innovative B2B Solutions

Cartona is an Egyptian tech startup company, a B2B platform that connects retailers to manufacturers and wholesalers. Recognizing the potential to improve productivity and reduce resource waste, Mahmoud Talaat, along with Mahmoud Abdel-Fattah Moursy and Rafik Zaher, founded Cartona in August 2020.

Cartona is a B2B e-commerce marketplace that focuses on solving supply chain and operational challenges for the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry. It achieves this by digitizing the offline trade market. Cartona offers a mobile app-based platform that includes features like price comparison, data recommendations, and many more.

Since its inception, Cartona has acquired over 30,000 users in Cairo and Alexandria and has processed over 400,000 delivered orders, with an annualized gross merchandise value of EGP 1 billion ($64 million).

The platform collaborates with 100 FMCG companies, 1,000 distributors and wholesalers, offering consumers access to over 10,000 products.

Cartona is dedicated to promoting a cashless society vision by investing in embedded finance, payments, and operational integration with all stakeholders.

The startup has partnered with digital payments providers like Fawry and Paymob and offers buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) services within the order cycle.

Through Cartona, retailers can browse, compare, and order merchandise, saving time, money, and effort in their daily operations.

Cartona currently processes approximately one million transactions annually, serving 60,000 users and collaborating with 200 FMCG companies, including industry leaders like Henkel, Unilever, Bel, and Mondelez.

Recently, Cartona secured $12 million in Series A funding, following a $4.5 million Pre-Series A round in September of the previous year.

The Series A funding was led by Silicon Badia. It also featured the SANAD Fund for MSMEs, Arab Bank accelerator, and Sunny Side Ventures.

The funding will enable Cartona to expand its digitally connected network of retailers, which currently numbers in the tens of thousands. It will also support market share growth and sustainable expansion beyond the nine governorates in Egypt where they currently operate.

CEO Talaat mentioned in an interview that executing any business strategy, especially one involving modernizing a traditional structure, comes with day-to-day hurdles as new infrastructure is put in place. But like any African Startup, these challenges will only make them stronger and better.

That is a lot to take in.

Cartona is doing extremely well in Egypt.

Would you like a Cartona around you??

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