Investment in Mena start-up Homzmart rises to $40m after latest round

Furniture and home goods e-commerce platform Homzmart has closed one of the past year’s biggest funding rounds for a Middle Eastern and North Africa (Mena) start-up, raising $23 million, its chief executive said.

The company, launched in 2020, will use the new funding to expand services, especially logistics, and fill gaps that appear in supply chains, co-founder and CEO Mahmoud Ibrahim said in an interview with Reuters.

The latest pre series B round funding round, which included participation from Riyadh-based technology venture capital fund STV, Impact46, Outliers Venture Capital, Rise Capital and Nuwa Capital, brings its total funding to about $40 million.

It raised $15 million in an earlier round that closed in the second quarter of last year, after an initial round in which it raised about $2.5 million.

Homzmart started by connecting brands and manufacturers with customers in the Arab world’s most populous country. But it found gaps in supply chains that prompted it to create a logistics arm, and now has about 100 trucks.

Homzmart has not yet achieved profitability but Ibrahim said it is still focused on expansion and building market share “through lazer-focused profitability milestones”. — Reuters