Brantu raises series A round lead by Sawari Ventures

The rapidly growing fashion platform Brantu has just raised a USD Seven-Figure Series A round led by Sawari Ventures.

Mohamed Rizk (aka Seemo) and Fredrik Granström launched Brantu 14 months ago, a digital marketplace that enables local and global fashion brands to reach Egyptian fashion consumers. At the heart of Brantu’s vision is to create a convenient and seamless fashion sales experience for the buyers and the fashion brands. Brantu debuted with a women’s assortment, offering fresh and trendy apparel via a mobile-first platform with exciting and appealing content, speedy delivery, and free returns. Brantu also offers fashion brands, various operational models, to simplify the onboarding process.

According to Mohamed Rizk, "We are changing the Egyptian consumer habit of buying fashion online. Before Brantu fashion consumers bought through international/cross-border websites, facing the issues of long delivery times & customs or local general merchandise platforms whose assortment & appeal do not cater to fashion consumers. We are providing speedy delivery, trendy products & appealing content to Egypt's mass population, serving millions of fashion shoppers.”

Wael Amin, Sawari Ventures Partner, added “Brantu is easily the best example of the tremendous acceleration in digital adoption that we have witnessed across all sectors during the pandemic. We have full faith in Brantu’s management team ability to take the company to market leadership.”

The move towards online fashion has shown incredibly strong momentum, especially since COVID 19. Many top online fashion platforms experienced tremendous growth and renowned mega fashion houses began complementing and occasionally substituting their offline sales to online to have a leaner and more efficient mode of selling their brands. The case for MENA’s online fashion space is just as compelling, according to a Bain report, the fashion industry in the MENA-region is expected to grow its online penetration from 2% to 9% by the end of 2022. The research was done before COVID-19, which expects to expedite the penetration from Brick & Mortar to online.

Brantu launched in July 2019 with just three brands, has seen strong MoM growth and managed to acquire 20,000+ Users in their first year with limited funding. The platform currently has an assortment exclusively for women from 70+ of the market’s top brands. With the investment, Brantu is looking to fuel the growth of its user base, increase its verticals and capture the growing market share within the growing fashion and lifestyle industry in Egypt.

Brantu believes that the market is finally ready for a fashion pure player. From our opinion there isn’t an ecommerce player that is serving the Egyptian region like we’re planning on doing.