Trella’s USD 42 Mn Truckload Is Maersk’s VC Trailer Into African Trucking

The current worth of the road freight market in MENA and Pakistan (MENAP) is USD 150 Bn.

A trucking and shipping startup out of Egypt is driving to be at the top of the region’s apparently valuable logistics chain. Cairo-headquartered Trella wants to do so by building a digital platform that connects shippers to carriers across its focus markets.

The company—now mostly referred to as “a trucking marketplace”—was founded in 2018 and launched in 2019. Omar Ograss, who founded Trella, says the firm was set up to reduce the costs associated with moving merchandise across its home market. 

“It’s three times more expensive to transport goods in Egypt than in the United States. Through this platform I can do something good for the country,” Omar explained back in 2019.

Today, Trella has built a problem-solving platform that offers transparent pricing, load efficiency, and real-time shipment tracking. 

Since 2019 when the trucking startup kicked off ops, it has been at least one externally-sourced funding round yearly. At the moment, Trella is fresh onto USD 42 Mn in financing. Last week, the Egyptian early-stage venture announced two funding rounds—USD 30 Mn in Series A and USD 12 Mn in debt financing. 

While a majority of the debt funding came from London-based lending giant Lendable, the Series A tranche was co-led by Saudi-based Raed Ventures and Maersk Growth.

The round doesn’t just place Trella in the league of Africa’s best-known trucking solutions but also the cult of the most funded startups in the MENA region. 

By way of a USD 42 Mn development that isn’t an everyday African fundraising affair, the startup’s recent financing saw the entrance of a firm unarguably the world's largest integrated shipping company. Maersk Growth—a co-leader in Trella’s USD 30 Mn Series A—is the investment vehicle of A.P. Moller-Maersk.