Egyptian grocery deliveries startup Appetito has merged with Saudi-based counterpart Jumlaty to create NOMU, which aims to become MENA’s leading food-tech supply chain platform.
Founded in March 2020 by Shehab Mokhtar, Appetito is a grocery delivery platform that sources products from manufacturers, stores them in its warehouses, and ships them to customers via mini fulfillment centres.
The startup raised a US$2 million pre-seed funding round in late 2021, and acquired Tunisian quick commerce platform Lamma to expand its operations into Morocco, Tunisia and West Africa in June of this year.
Jumlaty, on the other hand, is a food-tech supply chain platform that leverages AI, social commerce and smart financing to deliver high quality grocery products and more “at incredible value with a price match guarantee”.
The merger between the two creates NOMU, which is currently present in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco and has the capacity to cover the existing infrastructure of 25 million people and 100,000 F&B stores.
“Appetito and Jumlaty have been, separately but similarly, working hard to reinvent the grocery supply chain. Both have focused on reliability, speed, and affordability, building a solid reputation and a loyal customer base of families and F&B businesses. Our merger will set us on the path to reach SAR100 million (US$25 million) in revenue and positive EBITDA within 2023, with important synergies on the tech, marketing and procurement fronts,” said Mokhtar, CEO of Appetito, now CEO of NOMU.
“Both companies shared the same vision on how to transform the industry, combining smart tech, lean operations with a deep focus on unit economics. Together we capture the entire value chain, from monthly shopping to weekly refills and outdoor dining. Most importantly our journey now as one company will be accelerated thanks to an incredible team of international talents and supportive investors,” said Salman Attieh, CEO of Jumlaty, now chairman of NOMU.
NOMU will have its headquarters in Riyadh, with a holding structure in Abu Dhabi’s International Financial Centre, ideally placed to develop its operations further, with ambitions to cover Pakistan and key Sub-Saharan African countries in the near future.
