Egypt startup Rabbit comes out of stealth with $11M pre-seed

The rapid on-demand grocery and convenience delivery craze that has taken over Europe and the U.S. this past year is gradually making its way into Africa and the Middle East.

Today, the spotlight is on RabbitMart, or Rabbit for short, a startup coming out of stealth with $11 million in pre-seed funding. Rabbit is the latest of a long list of startups investors are willing to pump money into globally to deliver groceries and other items from neighbourhood fulfilment centres to people’s homes in 20 minutes or less.

In Egypt and Africa at large, Rabbit is one of the pioneers alongside Breadfast, which recently announced that it would begin to complete deliveries in less than 20 minutes. 

San Francisco-based Global Founders Capital, Raed Ventures, Foundation Venture, MSA Capital and Goodwater Capital participated in this pre-seed round, a new record for its stage in Africa and the Middle East, surpassing Egyptian fintech Telda at $5 million.

Ahmad Yousry, Walid Shabana, Ismail Hafez and Tarek El Geresy founded Rabbit in June. CEO Yousry, in an interview with TechCrunch, said the founders began discussing the idea of replicating fast delivery models in Egypt after noticing that he constantly experienced a sequence of slow and failed deliveries whenever he ordered groceries.

“You make an order, but you’re not quite sure if it’s gonna come or it’s going to be out of stock,” he said. “You’re not quite sure if it’s going to be delivered 100% or it’s going to be delivered on time or delayed. You’re not quite sure what you are going to get.”