Egypt's ecommerce potential drives startups to push past challenges

Startups Yaoota and Kickin both launched in June with a goal of exploiting the massive potential of Egyptian ecommerce, but both are finding that the road to market maturity is a long and difficult one.

Egypt’s ecommerce sector is still in its infancy. Not only must companies develop the market through educating customers about spending online, but they’ve got to do it on a shoestring too: investment funds for startups are scarce and building a quality system of online stores, product sourcing and storage, and delivery infrastructure is a cost-intensive business. But the sheer size of the potential market is what’s driving companies like Yaoota and Kickin to push past those challenges.

For Sherif Elrakabawy, cofounder of online price comparison site Yaoota, the key issues are educating consumers about online purchasing – Yaoota makes its money from online retailers, such as Souq.com and Jumia, who pay for the marketing – and developing simpler payment systems.

Kickin founder Hazem Biktash is closer to the nitty gritty of online retail, selling “creative” local and imported products via a website and an app. For him the main obstacles are attracting seed investment to use both for marketing and to create an effective infrastructure for sourcing goods, storing them, selling, and then delivering them in the promised timeframe.

The major ecommerce players in the Egypt market are regional companies Souq.com, Jumia, Nefsak, and secondhand marketplace Dubizzle. The regional ecommerce spectrum also includes daily deals sites such as Offerna, established retailers such as Diwan Bookstores which are moving online, and others such as virtual supermarket Eshtery or US importer Edsa3ly.

Original article by Rachel Williamson

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Egypt’s ecommerce potential drives startups to push past challenges