By Sarah Aly

Sarah@egyptventures.com

Gahez Marketplace, an Egyptian born company, has pioneered the way for the tech industry to enter the ready-made garment market in Egypt, and conceivably the African apparel marketplace. The company announced (date of publish) they successfully raised $2 million USD in pre-seed round funding since their inception in 2021. The terms were led by Disruptech Ventures and the major investment contribution was put forth by Egypt Ventures. Other participants included Tanmeyah (an EFG Hermes company),

Afropreneur fund, and other strategic angel investors.

The company came into fruition with an idea that blossomed from several prevalent struggles within the (B2B) business to business fashion supply chain in the region. While retailers in Egypt experience frequent difficulties due to a lack of visibility on market prices, limited access to wholesalers, and limited access to knowledge of ongoing offers and promotions from manufacturers, Gahez Marketplace provides a one-stop solution to combat all of these problems. The online platform links manufacturers and wholesalers with retailers, while enabling retailers to purchase goods on credit. This expands the retailer’s reach and provides unprecedented visibility on market prices, in addition to amplifying the reach of wholesalers and manufacturers in the market. Manufacturers will benefit from this service by gaining instant access to market data, thousands of retailers, and even export markets, and in turn, Gahez predicts substantial margin enhancements for its ready-made garment manufacturers. Likewise, retailers will take advantage of cash flow stability, transparent product pricing, easy access to credit, outsourced customer care, seamless logistics services, access to a wider selection of products, and optimal in-store inventory build up.

Mohamed Okasha, Disruptech Managing Partner commented, “We are excited to support Gahez’ business expansion plan through our board seat and strategic input. The team is paving the way to digitizing the region’s fashion wholesale market. With this investment, I am certain that they will be able to fulfill their targeted milestones.”

Founded in 2021, Gahez’ seamless technology was created to facilitate the first digital platform in the B2B fashion supply chain in the region. In a short period of time, Gahez has established itself in 16 governorates across the country, on-boarding over 15,000 retailers, 142 manufacturers and over 4,000 SKUs k(Gahez’s SKU is a wholesale set of sizes and colors) onto their platform with an inclusion of brick-and-mortar stores, online sellers and street vendors.
Gahez founder and CEO, Wael Olama, an industry veteran, brought Alfons Bebawy, Mohamed El-Zahaby, and Omar Manialawy on board, who are all leaders in the textile/tech/e-commerce industries with 20+ years of experience each and a proven track record in driving growth in the companies that were fortunate enough to work with them.

Olama commented on their vision for Gahez saying, “We are on a mission to revolutionize the way retailers shop for their stores by relieving the stress of managing and sourcing. We believe that the Egyptian/African apparel market is untapped and widely fragmented, which provides Gahez with the perfect opportunity (relying on technology) to scale and position itself within the sphere. Today, the market size of apparel in Egypt amounts to 24 billion USD, rendering the market’s future potential limitless. Alongside Egypt’s exports, around 2 billion USD worth of apparel mostly to the US and EU Markets, there’s a huge potential for growth in the African markets, and this can happen rapidly only through the digital world.”

Gahez is tapping into a disorderly market of street resellers, supplying them with smaller ticket-size transactions to empower their trading ability. The online marketplace’s impact will provide them with better margins and variety. Furthermore, due to strong demand from neighboring African countries, Gahez will accelerate its growth and geographical expansion within the region by catering to different markets.

With the support of its investment partners, Gahez has set high expectations to assert its dominance within the Egyptian marketplace, and confidently expand into new territories in the near future. Armed with a team of top-talent, these goals will be achieved through innovation and creation of groundbreaking technology tools that are designed for the sole purpose of supporting their user’s experience on both ends of the B2B fashion supply chain. Gahez plans to deploy its technology to serve all the targeted customer segments and future expansions.