MOROCCO – Azur Innovation Fund, a public-private seed fund aimed at providing money to creative Moroccan entrepreneurs has invested US$390,000 in Cloud Fret. It is the fund’s second investment following that of Epicerie Verte.
Cloud Fret is a transport and logistics startup founded in 2020. Its platform connects loaders and transporters as it aims to eliminate empty returns of trucks between the two ends of the Mediterranean.
Its aim is to optimise the transport of trucks with the help of artificial intelligence which can track the movement of empty cargo trucks and orient them to cargo which needs to be transported.
Cloud Fret wants to fully digitise this process in order to optimise transportation costs while reducing the environmental impact of cargo trucks using an ethical and sustainable model.
In fact, not only is the platform servicing loaders and transporters, but also it allows their partners to access opportunities to increase their activities while decreasing the time of delivery. The startup also provides live updates of the cargo’s journey.
Azur Innovation Fund aims to promote initiatives that are part of Morocco’s development strategy, namely: the Industrial Acceleration Plan, the Green Morocco Plan, and the Morocco Digital Plan. To do this, it is investing in many sectors such as agritech, fintech, biotech, medtech, edtech, cleantech, and more.
The fund remains open to innovation in the broad sense and aims to develop the entrepreneurial field in the country, through its multiple collaborations with the various players in the ecosystem (incubators, accelerators, investment funds, banks, etc.).
In May this year, Epicerie Verte, a Casablanca-based digital marketplace specializing in allowing producers to sell their local organic products online, has raised US$748,000 from Azur Innovation Fund.
Amine SLIMANI, Founder and Managing Director, said the funds raised from Azur Innovation Fund will enable Epicerie Verte to accelerate its growth both in Morocco and internationally.
With the fundraising, the young company also intends to recruit and attack the European market to promote organic “Made in Morocco”.
Founded in 2017, Epicerie Verte is a 100% online marketplace specializing in organic products. It is an online store where farmers, producers and other sellers of organic products can market their goods.
Its objective is to create a point of intersection between strong demand from customers for local organic products and a growing offer that cannot easily find a distribution channel.
