Egypt-based logistics startup Bosta said Thursday it secured new funding from former DHL Express Global CEO Ken Allen, who also joined the company as a board member, for an undisclosed amount.
Allen’s investment is part of a funding round set to be closed in a few weeks, Bosta CEO and co-founder Mohamed Ezzat told Forbes Middle East, without providing further details. The startup, founded in 2017, has already raised over $20 million in funding to date.
Ambitious plans
Allen joins Bosta as the company plans to venture into new markets across the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA). In 2022, Bosta expanded its operations by penetrating the Saudi Arabian market, focusing on the underserved areas and a long tail of SMEs that represents 70% of the Saudi market.
The expansion comes as the logistics market is expected to reach $90 billion in the MENA region by 2026, according to Statista. Regionally, Egypt is leading in the logistics market, with the highest expected cumulative annual growth rate of 8.3% between 2020 and 2026, followed by Qatar.
“The continuous search for a low-cost, high-quality digital solution for last-mile delivery has been critical to the ongoing success of the e-commerce industry,” stated Allen, who previously led the transformation of Deutsche Post’s DHL Express unit—a $15.9 billion revenue division—between 2009 and 2018 and later went on to become the CEO of DHL eCommerce Solutions.
Powering E-commerce
Mohamed Ezzat and Ahmed Gaber co-founded Bosta to help e-commerce businesses store, deliver, and analyze their performance. It carried over seven million parcels for 10,000 merchants in 2022.
Bosta initially pursued on-demand, same-day deliveries before shifting to next-day deliveries. It currently works with e-commerce companies of all sizes, though its key focus is serving small businesses.
Before setting up Bosta, Gaber, a Forbes Middle East Under 30 lister of Class 2021, co-founded a P2P file-sharing application for smartphones called “Join.” Ezzat previously served as chief operating officer of Lynks, an Egyptian e-commerce company, before co-founding Bosta with Gaber.
Resource: Forbes Middle East
