Moatasem Marzouk has an interest in product development and management. Two years ago, he devised a technological solution for obtaining our grocery. Last year, his dream came true when he launched ‘On Market’ app in the Delta city of Tanta, where the digitisation of the grocery transactions is still limited. The Egyptian e-grocery industry is worth $15 billion and is expected to grow by 20 per cent in the next five years.
EG: Why did you start and what’s the passion behind it?
Moatasem Marzouk: We were thinking about building ‘On Market’ about two years ago, and we made our decision in 2020 after Covid-19 pandemic hit the world including Egypt. We spotted the high demand in Egypt for a convenient, safe, fast and affordable e-grocery.
It was a hard decision to make to start from a well-established market like Cairo or to take the risk and start in a pure but high potential market of Tanta. And we decided to start outside Cairo, in the middle of Nile Delta, in Tanta as the first marketplace app focused on e-grocery to serve Delta cities. We are amazed by the market adoption and what we have achieved so far which went beyond our expectations.
EG: What is your background?
MM: Business and I studied technology products management at Product School, Silicon Valley.
I also helped my previous company to establish their logistics technology products and revenue stream from scratch to reach 40 per cent of their annual revenue across five GCC countries. That’s before I came back to Egypt to be dedicated for On Market.
EG: What are the issues you are solving and what is your value proposition?
MM: We believe that the grocery market in Egypt isn’t yet disrupted and has a very high potential. We are talking about $15 billion market size and it is expected to grow by 20 per cent in the next five years. Inspired by the huge international investments by big players like Marakez and Majid Al Futtaim and the ongoing government mega-projects, we see major cities outside Cairo as high potential for e-grocery.
We are on a mission to make our customers’ lives easier by saving them the hassle of grocery shopping. They need to save their time, effort and money and also to make sure they and their families are safe during Covid-19. We offer a marketplace mobile App that makes it convenient for them to do so.
EG: Tell us more about the process, users, business model
MM: Our App is the first in Egypt that allows our customers to order groceries online from multiple supermarkets and stores in only one order. Our customers don’t have to make separate orders, receive orders from multiple delivery captains and pay more than once for each order.
Moreover, our model allows the stores to compete in terms of pricing and quality. That competition would benifit our customers to compare between the stores and get the best pricing and offers. The same time, we help supermarkets and stores to increase their revenue and we offer them B2B services and products as well.
EG: What are your main challenges?
MM: Playing in such pure market in major cities and transform it from offline to online is a big challenge in itself. We’ve faced challenges related to recruitment, logistics, bringing in the stores and supermarkets to partner with us and we still have other challenges. However, in the past year, we proved to ourselves that we can overcome a lot of these challenges and we have seen the numbers and what we could achieve in such short period. That also excites us to expand and look for other markets in the future, if we could make it in such a tough market, we can do it in other more established and mature markets which definitely also has different type of challenges.
EG: What are your achievements and future plans?
MM: In only one year, in only one city, only 12 hours operations and with an MVP, we’ve achieved interesting numbers and found our product market fit. We achieved 8x since we started, 25 per cent CMGR, 12,000 completed orders, EGP3 Millions GMV, 35+ contracts, 65 per cent retention rate and 4.8/5 customer satisfaction.
Our plan is to expand to other high potential cities in Delta before going to Cairo and Alex. Also from our close interaction with supermarkets and stores, we have spotted painful problems for them and we are planning to build other B2B technology products and solutions that would tackle these pains. In order to do so, we are in negotiations with potential investors to raise a seed fund.
EG: Do you think the ecosystem is helping you?
MM: As we still operate outside Cairo, the startup ecosystem still needs more effort and investments in governorates to get mature. We are connecting with other startups in Delta to help with that, and we aspire to make succes stories that demonstrate the high potential of this market in governorates.
