Egypt’s Suplyd raises $1.6M to digitize restaurants supply chain • TechCrunch

Suplyd, a procurement platform for hotels, restaurants and catering (HoReCa) businesses in Egypt, has raised $1.6 million pre-seed funding from Endure Capital, Seedstars, Camel Ventures, Falak Startups, and a number of angel investors.

Founded in January this year, Suplyd’s B2B platform brings efficiency in the supply chain operations for businesses in the food service industry by allowing digital order procurement, payment, and fulfillment.

Through its platform, restaurants get access to a wide range of products on demand , saving them man hours wasted in sourcing for goods offline. It also ensures that the businesses acquire the goods at competitive prices.

Suplyd plans to use the new funding to scale its technology and expand within and beyond Cairo, and to explore other growth opportunities in Middle-East and North Africa (MENA) region in the near future.

“Restaurants’ supply chain is a global issue, where everyone right now is looking into how to cut costs and reduce waste. However, the Egyptian market is extremely big yet untapped, and that’s where we direct our efforts for the next phase before we expand to other global markets,” said Gohar Said, Suplyd CEO who co-founded the startup with Karim Selima, and Ahmed ElMahdy.

Said, a restaurateur for 12 years, Suplyd is bringing an e-commerce experience to the restaurant supply chain, by optimizing assets, reducing waste for the whole ecosystem, while saving the businesses time and effort used to communicate and follow up with suppliers.

The startup’s network of tech-enabled fulfillment centers, offers the Suplyd insights on demand patterns and trends that informs stocking, to ensure restaurants supplies needs are fulfilled on demand, and avoid waste on suppliers end too.

“In a normal scenario, restaurants have to go out to the market looking for suppliers for their SKUs, then they start validating their prices. If the right match happens, which is not always the case, the fulfillment risk takes place, whether because of tight delivery windows, order placement restrictions, or quantity issues,” said Said.

“What Suplyd is offering is a digital procurement engine, a platform where it makes it easy for restaurants to buy supplies at considerably cheaper rates than open market prices, exposes restaurants to a wide range of SKUs, guarantees fulfillment through a single platform, and simplifies the transaction and the delivery process. It also benefits suppliers with real-time analytics and actionable insights when it comes to demand patterns and trends,” he said.

Suplyd says it is currently serving 500 customers in greater Cairo, having grown by almost 50% month over month since launch. The startup, which is stepping up competition for players like OneOrder, expects greater growth over the next one year sustained by its expansion plans geared towards serving Egypt’s vast HoReCa industry, which is supported by over 400,000 restaurants.

Tarek Fahim, general partner at Endure Capital said: “Eating out is a major part of social life in the Middle East, but the supply chain that enables restaurants to serve customers is highly fragmented. We are thrilled to support the team and the platform Suplyd is building to digitize the supply chain for restaurants, improving efficiency and reducing food waste in our communities.”