BrazilEgyptian startup Koinz bags $4.8 million in seed round
Koinz – an Egyptian origin food & beverage platform set up by former PwC man Abdullah AlKhaldi alongside tech experts Hussein Momtaz and Ahmed Said – has raised nearly $5 million in seed funding after posting stellar growth in the MENA market.
The funding round was led by Justin Mateen – the founder of Tinder – who makes Koinz his first ever investment in MENA. “The company’s unique business model will continue to scale as the food delivery space evolves,” said Mateen.
Koinz is set up as a growth-enabling and profitable alternative to food aggregator apps, which usually charge 30% in commission to cover high customer acquisition costs. Through a reward system for walk-ins, take outs and online orders that can only be redeemed via an app – Koinz brings offline customers online, topped off with real-time customer insights.
This cuts customer acquisition costs by 60% compared to other aggregators, making Koinz a partner of choice for F&B businesses in MENA. Since launching in 2018, Koinz has distributed reward points to more than 4 million customers by its own declaration – 300,000 of which have been redeemed – helped along by nearly 800,000 customers reviews.
A team of six that started in Cairo has now grown into an 80-strong workforce spread across Saudi Arabia and the UAE – high growth markets for online groceries and food & beverage. This stellar rise can now continue, spurred on by $4.8 million in seed investments and an experienced set of leaders is at the helm.
Koinz CEO Hussein Mumtaz is a former software engineer and managing director of GPlanet Technologies. Chief revenue officer Abdullah AlKhaldi spent six years as a procurement specialist at Saudi Aramco, before a spell as advisory manager at Big Four accounting and advisory firm PwC. Chief Technology Officer Ahmed Said is a software engineer by background who founded GPlanet Technologies in 2014.
Looking ahead
The trio will now be joined on the board of directors by Mateen and 4DX Ventures founder Peter Orth – who also participated in the latest funding round. The plan moving forward is to hire more talent and expand through the Middle East, where the firm’s proposition will likely remain in high demand.
As noted by Orth, the margin-eroding aggregator model was already a challenge before 2020, and the pandemic induced online boom combined with dips in revenue and cash flow drove food & beverage businesses to the brink of survival. The Koinz model is a saving grace in this challenging landscape, setting it up for success.
