Sakneen Raises $1.1M in Seed Funding Round to Boost Innovation

The Egyptian property sector is about to experience another jump in innovation development. Earlier this week, Jumia announced that the country would be its headquarters for its new tech hub as its the best African country to lead the market when it comes to producing new products and services for the real estate sector. Now, Sakneen, a Cairo-based proptech startup, has raised $1.1 million in a seed funding round to expand its team of world-class talent and continue developing solutions for property buyers and sellers.

The round was led by Algebra Ventures, with participation from huge names like US-based real estate private equity firm Hem + Spire, Saudi-based investment firm Nakhla VC, and angels from Google, BlackRock, and McKinsey.

Speaking on his company to MENAbytes, Co-Founder and CEO of Sakneen, Ramy Khorshed explained what sets the startup apart from others in the industry, including why rental listings can’t be found on the platform: 

“Similar to how Zillow built up their database from publicly accessible data and overlaid MLS data on top of it, we curate our content to manage quality and prevent duplication. This means that sellers compete over positioning rather than over listings. With the high-quality data, we can provide our sellers with high quality, actionable analytics, and buyers with a better home searching experience.

“Our plan is to be the best at the verticals we compete in and we’re careful with our go-to-market not to dilute quality. This started with primary homes and new builds which we aggregate ourselves and will extend into other verticals as we add the capacities needed to offer differentiated experiences.”

Sakneen was part of last year’s Y Combinator and has made leaps and bounds since it left the accelerator. One of its verticals doubled its month-over-month revenues since the startup started monetizing it and it has an ambitious home loans product in the works. 

Hussein El Kheshen, CTO and Co-Founder of Sakneen, said:

“Our incredible tech team is actively working on several new features that will be launched over the next few weeks, in addition to a couple of completely new products we’re excited to release shortly afterward.”