Egyptian P2P savings tool ElGameya has secured a six-figure US dollar investment in a pre-seed angel syndication to support its growth plans.
ElGameya is a mobile application that facilitates the management and collection of the ROSCA cycle, otherwise referred to as money circles. Users can either use it as a platform to digitise their private money circles, or get matched to users with similar saving and lending capabilities in a public circle.
ElGameya’s app also features a built-in marketplace enabling users to access exclusive discounted products as a cash-out option.
The startup is a graduate of AUC Venture Lab’s Fintech Accelerator, and has now raised pre-seed funding in a syndication led by AUC Angels, MENA’s first university-based angel network, marking its first institutional investment round. ElGameya last year took on a small amount of funding after taking part in the Startupbootcamp-Pride FinTech Cairo accelerator programme.
This pre-seed round also sees participation from Cairo Angels and Alex Angels, and ElGameya intends to deploy the raised funds towards enhancing application features and growing its user base. The startup now serves users in Cairo, and targets reaching over 1,000 circles by next year.
“ElGameya can really capitalise on the immense potential present in peer-to-peer lending, by modernising the pervasive and age-old tradition of gam3iyat. This investment round demonstrates investors’ belief in its possibilities,” said Mariam Kamel, manager of AUC Angels.
“We are very pleased to have closed this investment round and to have co-invested in this opportunity with other regional angel investors. We are very confident in ElGameya’s team and the sky is the limit for them,” said Zeina Mandour, general manager of Cairo Angels.
