Supply chain startup and e-commerce, Total, emerged from obscurity today with $5.85 million in seed funding led by VentureSouq, with participation from Global 500, DASH Ventures, Jahez Group, SEEDRA Ventures, Bunat Ventures, Hala Ventures, RZM Investments, and several family offices including Al Rasheed, Siraj Holding, Al. Al-Bawardi, Al-Nafi’.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia-based startup has built systems for ordering, warehouse management and transportation management, enabling merchants to leverage hyper-local, multi-channel commerce, and efficiently manage their orders and inventory in real-time. It also empowers third-party logistics providers (3PLs) to manage their workflow efficiently.
Mostafa Aboulnasr, co-founder and CEO of Omniful, told TechCrunch that the pain points most merchants face, including aligning different sales channels, managing inventory flows, inventory accuracy, and picking and fulfillment time, inspired him and Ankrit Nishad, both of whom have extensive experience. Experience in e-commerce to get started. Moreover, Abu Al-Nasr says, market research shows that legacy software failed to meet customer needs, was difficult to scale and expensive, and took time to deploy.
“We started with a vision to rebuild the technologies that are currently used and will be used in the future for supply chain, local omnichannel retail, and e-commerce operations. This requires us to fundamentally rethink every feature on a first-principle basis, with a critical focus on Absolutely based on four pillars: speed, accuracy, scale and efficiency,” he said, adding that they are also keen to reach out to smaller merchants.
“We look at it from the point of impact and pain point release perspective.”
Large businesses and small merchants using its technology gain the ability to leverage different sales channels to reduce manpower costs per store and fulfillment time by up to 40% and 70%, respectively.
Early customers of Omniful’s globalized product include some of the largest retailers and third-party logistics providers in several markets including Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Abu Al-Nasr said their technology can handle at least 3 million orders per day per customer, making it suitable for customers seeking growth. This also paves the way for its growth plans which include expanding its customer base in other parts of the world, including Africa and India, where it has a research and development centre.
“We see Omniful as having unique, far-reaching applications, which gives it a lot of room to operate. Here in the MENA region [Middle East and North Africa]The concept of trading is an integral part of our history. “This region has a long-standing tradition of great retail franchises, which Omniful can help enhance, making it more competitive in an increasingly dynamic environment,” said Tamer Kadoumi, General Partner at VentureSouq.
“Omniful is universal, adaptable and global, and has already found use cases across many large markets. We sincerely see Omniful as a borderless solution that can become essential for any local business and also play a role in standardizing processes for cross-border operations.”