Grace Ashiru
Morocco’s neighbourhood shops still run largely on handshakes and paper. A Casablanca-based startup is raising the money to change that.
ZSystems has raised $1.65 million in seed funding to accelerate its mission of digitising the country’s fragmented retail supply chain. The round was led by Azur Innovation Management, with follow-on participation from existing investors MNF Ventures and Witamax, alongside new backing from the Harambeans Prosperity Fund — marking the company’s first international institutional investor. The latest raise brings ZSystems’ total funding to $2.7 million, following an earlier pre-seed round.
Founded in 2022 by Samer Choumar, Meriem Benabad, Youssef Haddouch, Reda Nebri, and Youssef Drafate, ZSystems is building a B2B2C digital marketplace connecting brands, wholesalers, and retailers. The company is targeting a $40 billion market that remains largely undigitised, where inefficiencies in sourcing, pricing, and distribution continue to limit growth across the value chain.
Despite the rise of modern supermarkets, the traditional sector — comprised of thousands of neighbourhood shops known as hanouts — still dominates Morocco’s economy. ZSystems is tackling the massive fragmentation within this market by positioning itself as the essential software layer for the region’s B2B value chain, focusing on intermediation rather than displacing existing wholesalers.
The company is currently supported by the EBRD’s Star Venture programme and Amazon Web Services, providing the technical backbone needed to scale. The Moroccan Ministry of Industry and Trade has also previously designated ZSystems as the national digital intermediation platform, with a target of bringing 50,000 retailers into the digital fold by 2030.
The new capital will be used to enhance product development, expand the platform’s reach, and deepen market penetration as ZSystems looks to make itself an indispensable layer in how goods flow from manufacturer to neighbourhood shelf across Morocco and, eventually, the wider North African region.
