Egypt-based fashion marketplace The Fashion Kingdom (TFK), has secured $2.6 million in a seed funding round, co-led by CVentures and A15, with participation from existing investors such as Paul Antaki and Nasser Chourbagi.
New participating investors include Lotus Capital, Africa-focused investors Raba Partnership, Sunny Side Venture Partners, Foundation Ventures and The Cairo Angels Syndicate Fund.
Founded in July 2020 by Fadi Antaki, Marianne Simaika and Karim Abd El Kader, TFK seeks to help local fashion entrepreneurs and brand owners sell online, and provide customers with an affordable and convenient shopping experience.
Proceeds will be used to accelerate TFK’s growth, build scalable technology and grow the team.
TFK says it is currently helping more than 200 local and international leading brands grow their sales online through its curated marketplace. It added that over 135,000 customers are using TFK for their fashion shopping needs.
Qwili
Two-year old South African startup Qwili has snagged $1.2 million in a seed funding round led by E4E Africa with participation from Strat-Tech, Next Chymia, Untapped Global and Codec Ventures besides some angel investors.
Qwili has developed a hybrid hardware-software product consisting of a smartphone and a digital sales ecosystem. It provides the smartphone to cater to agents, who use these devices a point of sales (POS) systems.
As per its website it also develops an operating system for its devices, of which the central feature is a sales portal (also a downloadable app for non-Qwili phones). Qwili agents use this sales portal to sell value-added services such as airtime, electricity and pay TV subscriptions for a commission.
The venture was co-founded by Luyolo Sijake, Thandwefika Radebe and Tapfuma Masunzambwa.
The firm is expected to use the money to develop the app, hire people besides hardware production.
Qwili claims around 500 micro and small merchants use its hybrid platform with half of them using its NFC-enabled smartphones that cist under $100.
It says it currently processes $75,000 monthly gross merchandise value but is aiming at a major jump in business with six-fold rise in merchants and manifold increase in GMV by December as it adds neighbouring market Botswana to its network.

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© The Capital Quest, 2021
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