UM6P Ventures, the investment fund of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, has invested in Chari, a B2B e-commerce business with embedded finance for the FMCG sector, based in Morocco.
Established in 2020 by Ismael and Sophia Belkhayat, a husband-and-wife duo, Chari enables Moroccan traditional neighbourhood store owners to place orders and have their products delivered. The platform has extended into Tunisia and the Ivory Coast, having onboarded over 20,000 food enterprises in Morocco.
The company, which was part of the Y Combinator S21 batch, obtained US $5 million in a seed round in late 2021 and added more funding in January of the previous year. It announced follow-on funding from Plug and Play in June, raised an additional US $1 million from Orange Ventures in February, and received an extra US $1.5 million from Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures (VKAV) in July.
It has recently deposited additional funds from Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique (UM6P) Ventures, the investment fund, intending to foster entrepreneurship and accelerate scientific innovation in Morocco and Africa. The two funds that UM6P Ventures manages are the Digital Transformation Fund and the Deeptech Projects Fund.
Chari will utilize the money raised, according to Ismael Belkhayat, to “become a leader in B2B e-commerce with embedded finance.” He went on to say that the firm wants to provide local companies with access to a range of financial services.
