Luxembourg E-Commerce Platform MarketLeap Secures €1.5m Seed Funding

On Tuesday 10 October 2023, Luxembourg-based e-commerce platform MarketLeap (formerly Gonuggets) announced that it has secured an additional €1.5 million in seed funding, bringing its total funding to €2.6 million.

The latest round saw Notion Capital, Kima Ventures and Motier Ventures, among others, join existing investors, including Luxembourg's Expon Capital. MarketLeap confirmed in a press release that it will use the funding to accelerate the operating system's technical development, including the addition of new service offerings, and to facilitate expansion into the United States while scaling operations in the United Kingdom.

As MarketLeap explained, online marketplaces continue to experience rapid growth, with the top 100 selling $3.25 trillion in goods in 2022. Reports estimate that third-party online marketplaces will become the largest and fastest-growing retail channel globally, accounting for 59% of global e-commerce sales transactions by 2027.

MarketLeap was founded as Gonuggets in 2022 by Mamoun Benkirane and Mekki Mouaddeb, former employees of e-commerce giants Amazon and Jumia. The rebranded MarketLeap aims to "democratise e-commerce, allowing brands to unlock their potential reach and revenues and immediately launch across new marketplaces worldwide, breaking e-commerce boundaries in the same transformative way that Amazon did in the retail landscape."

"Currently, most brands reach only 0.2% of their total marketplace potential due to a lack of expertise, time and money. They end up spending over 70% of their time managing their marketplace operations, accounting for less than 20% of their total revenue," explained Mamoun Benkirane, CEO and co-founder of MarketLeap. "MarketLeap helps brands break through their revenue ceilings on e-commerce marketplaces. We make marketplaces the easiest sales channel for brands, with no time, effort or capital required, allowing them to focus on what they are the most passionate about, building and sourcing their products."

According to MarketLeap, its clients have achieved an average of 4x revenue growth within the first month of operations. The company currently helps brands sell on marketplaces across more than 30 countries (and counting). Customers include Danish watchmaker Nordgreen, Swedish audio product manufacturer Defunc, British collagen producer Edible Health and Germany's Guggenheimer Coffee.

"The e-commerce landscape is evolving rapidly and online marketplaces are becoming the established backbone for many of the largest online retailers. The skilled and experienced founding team immediately made MarketLeap's potential and differentiation clear in this noisy field. MarketLeap is pioneering the way brands expand globally, compete effectively and access hidden demand. We are honoured to back them and support their continued journey ahead," says Owen Reynolds, Venture Partner at Luxembourg-based Expon Capital.

"Our platform is integrated with several partners, including 3PLs and finance service providers to manage all the operational complexities while continuously supporting our partner brands as they scale up," added COO and co-founder Mekki Mouaddeb.

Mamoun Benkirane concluded: "We have proven so far that our proprietary technology can help us screen, launch and scale brands on multiple e-commerce marketplaces incredibly efficiently. This new funding round will allow us to speed up our rich feature suite while expanding even faster into new channels and countries. Our aim is to build a complete new layer of tech infrastructure that seamlessly connects thousands of brands to hundreds of marketplaces."