Trella

Trella is a Cairo headquartered technology company founded in 2018 by Omar Hagrass, Ali El Atrash, Pierre Saad, and Muhammad El Garem, four former executives from Uber, Vezeeta, and OLX whose name derives from the Egyptian Arabic colloquial word for truck. The platform addresses the deep inefficiency of the MENAP road freight market, where fleet utilization in Egypt stands at just 15 percent compared to 55 percent in the US and freight costs are two to four times higher than in Europe, by providing a digital two-sided marketplace enabling enterprise shippers to create and manage loads with real-time GPS tracking, live status updates, a centralized performance dashboard, and paperless documentation, while giving truckers and carriers access to a consistent flow of verified loads, route optimization, and faster payments. Trella serves over 350 enterprise shippers including global blue-chip brands such as Coca-Cola, Maersk, Mondi, Henkel, Amazon, DHL, Orascom, and Cemex, alongside more than 30,000 carrier partners predominantly composed of independent small-fleet and single-truck operators across Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Pakistan. Founded as a Y Combinator Winter 2019 batch company and initially raising only 600,000 dollars in pre-seed capital, Trella scaled rapidly to process over two million tons of shipments in 2021 alone, attracting Maersk Growth as a strategic lead investor in its 42 million dollar Series A, making it one of the best-funded trucking technology startups in the MENA region. The company has since received additional debt financing from ALMA Sustainable Finance, the US International Development Finance Corporation, Contact Financial Holding, and Avanz Capital Egypt to support MSME carrier financing and regional expansion, with a total disclosed capital of approximately 52.25 million dollars per CB Insights.