Elmenus, an online food-discovery platform, has closed a $1.5m Series A funding round with an investment from Algebra Ventures, a local venture capital fund, the company said in a press release on Sunday.
The company, whose popular mobile app is used by more than 1 million monthly users, will use the funding to build new features that make it simpler for users to order food online.
Prior to the Algebra investment, Elmenus had raised only $60,000 in outside funding and was started with a $3,000 investment by founder and chief executive officer Amr Allam, who was frustrated that it had become impossible to keep up with Cairo’s blossoming restaurant scene.
“We’ve seen an explosion of new restaurants in Cairo over the past few years, from high-end fine dining to joints that offer modern twists on traditional Egyptian dishes,” said Allam.
“This created a novel problem for diners: decisions. How do you discover the hottest new restaurants? What do they actually offer? And what do people really think of them? That’s the problem that Elmenus set out to solve: how to help people make the best dining decision each and every time.”
According to the press release, Elmenus’ goal is to deliver comprehensive information on all restaurants in Egypt, real user-generated photos, and recommendations, all to help people make the best dining decisions.
“With over 5,000 restaurants and half a million dishes on Elmenus, we spent the last years refining our product offering to restaurants,” said Allam.
“In the process, we’ve crafted a hyper targeted set of ad tools that help restaurants of all sizes target their exact customers, supported by deep behavioral data analytics,” he added.
“Looking forward, this investment will allow us to build on more features, like online ordering, that both our users and restaurants have been asking for,” Allam continued.
Ziad Mokhtar, managing partner at Algebra Ventures, will be joining Elmenus’ board of directors.
“With this investment, Elmenus is well poised to grab a substantial stake in the digital food space, which is dominated globally by the likes of Just Eat, Zomato, and Delivery Hero,” he said.
“Considering that prior to our investment, Elmenus had seen only $60,000 in funds invested, the traction they’ve achieved—in terms of users, revenues, content—is impressive,” he added.
