What is MaxAB? MaxAB Review, Features

Founded in 2018, MaxAB is a Cairo-based B2B e-commerce marketplace that connects informal food and grocery retailers with suppliers through an easy-to-use application, thereby reducing the middleman between these traditional retailers (more than 400,000 in Egypt) and fast-moving consumer goods. The platform also provides logistics and customer service support.

Basic Information

MaxAB’s customers are small retailers in Egypt. MaxAB currently has 60 trucks, 270 employees and 9,000 retail customers. It has a large warehouse in Cairo and has designed an on-demand inventory model that ensures three to four days of extra inventory.

MaxAB has built an inventory of more than 600 products, including groceries, beverages, dairy products and confectionery. Its goal is to develop the $45 billion fast-moving consumer food retail market through automation, and claims to have achieved month-on-month growth and has 9,000 active retailers on the platform.

Merchants using MaxAB gain access to its real-time demand monitoring and business intelligence tools, which improve end-to-end supply chain control and forecasting.

Founder

MaxAB was founded in 2018 by Belal El-Megharbel, formerly General Manager of Careem Cairo, and Mohamed Ben Halim, formerly of Aramex.

Advantages

1. MaxAB is using data-driven technology and the latest supply chain to redesign the food and grocery market.

2. Supply chain integration provides retailers with the best prices.

3. 24-hour delivery to small retailers and stores within the service area.

4. Price visibility for suppliers and retailers.

5. In less than a year of operation, MaxAB completed 40,000 shipments.

Financing

In 2019, Cairo-based B2B e-commerce MaxAB announced that it had received $6.2 million in seed funding, the largest seed round ever for a tech startup in the Middle East and North Africa. Investors included Dubai-based Beco Capital (also an investor in Egypt’s startup star Swvl), Africa-focused 4DX Ventures and Endure Capital, and Morocco-based Outlierz Ventures. 4DX Ventures led the investment in Kenyan B2B supply chain startup Sokowatch, which has a similar model to MaxAB.