Alsaree3, Baghdad's Premier Food Delivery App, and E-logistics Company, Al Zajel, Closes Seed Round
Baghdad, Iraq - Alsaree3, Baghdad’s most popular food delivery app, recently closed its 6- figure seed round in late August 2020. This round also included investment in its sister company, Al Zajel, which provides last-mile deliveries and e-logistics services in Baghdad.
Alsaree3 has been operational since 2018 and quickly became the market leader due to its high-quality customer service, fast deliveries, and extensive selection of restaurants (450+) in Baghdad. In addition to providing customers a seamless experience, Alsaree3 focuses on creating as much value as possible for its restaurant partners. It developed its own POS technology and hardware for restaurants to use for its orders which restaurants have willingly paid for themselves. The founder and CEO, Bassam Al-Ateia, says, “Alsaree3 was one of the first companies in the whole region who started developing and using these Android POS systems since our start in 2018. This state-of-the-art technology enables our restaurants to accept, print and check the history for each order. Also, it enables some of our exclusive restaurants to place offline orders. What’s more, the special M2M sim cards in these POS devices reduce the internet cost for the restaurants enormously.”
Within the past year, Mr. Al-Ateia noticed an opportunity to use his drivers for C2C, B2B and last-mile deliveries and founded Al Zajel to meet this need in the market. Al Zajel offers an on- demand delivery service within one hour for packages weighing 2kg or less to any location in Baghdad. Together, Alsaree3 and Al Zajel share their own fleet of bikes and drivers, and work with additional drivers on a contractual basis during peak hours.
The seed round was led by Iraq Tech Ventures (Mohammed and Laura Khudairi) and Mr. Shwan Ibrahim Taha, Chairman of Rabee Securities. Other investors in this round included Rawaz Rauf, New Venture Manager for the Hiwa Rauf Group, Bassam Falah, founder and Managing Partner of Innovest ME, and Subhi Khudairi, President of Khudairi Group. The round included funds raised for both Alsaree3 and Al Zajel. Iraq Tech Ventures and its syndicate of investors were most inspired by Alsaree3’s strong set-up and the team’s ability to provide a consistent, high-quality service despite the countless challenges in Baghdad, and most recently from the restrictions due to COVID-19. Restrictions forced many Iraqis to become new adopters of delivery services like Alsaree3, a trend investors believe will continue as the digital literacy of Iraq’s population increases. Mohammed Khudairi, of Iraq Tech Ventures, says, “Alsaree3 is incredibly strong operationally due to the founder’s investment in quality, proprietary technology and his extensive experience operating in Iraq. We have no doubts about Alsaree3 and Al Zajel’s promising performance in the future.”
This is the second venture in Iraq that was successfully brought to market by the collaboration between Iraq Tech Ventures and Shwan Ibrahim Taha. "I am a firm believer in a future of Iraq that is led by its entrepreneurs. Through our consortium we are proud to help Iraqi startups like Alsaree3, and we look forward to more investments in the sector," says Mr. Taha.
Guest Author:
Laura Olivier Khudairi
info@iraqtechventures.com