Cairo-based online fashion rental platform La Reina, has raised an undisclosed six-figure seed round from 500 Startups, Algebra Ventures along with a group of angel investors.

Founded in 2016 by Amr Diab and Ghada Eltanawy, La Reina connects dress owners to renters directly. Currently, the platform has over 100,000 registered users.

“Though Covid-19 has triggered seismic shifts in shopping behaviour, we are impressed with how Ghada and her team have worked hard to quickly pivot its strategy to cope with this new era and keep the fashion clothing accessible to its customers. We are excited to support La Reina as they continue expanding their product offerings and forge ahead as pioneers in this fashion rental space,” said Sharif El-Badawi, managing partner at 500 Startups Middle East and North Africa. 

The company plans to use the funds to expand its team and launch its newest fashion subscription service, The Box, which provides its members with day-to-day clothing of their favourite brands delivered to their doorstep every week for a subscription fee. It allows customers to use the items and return them in a week. According to the company, The Box is specifically intended for working women, who might be time-strapped to go shopping.

“We created The Box to offer practical shopping solutions for women who lead busy lives but are also keen on looking their absolute best every single day. We want our members to become versatile in how they dress up while also encouraging them to create a very minimal wardrobe. Such an approach stresses the importance of fashion sustainability, The Box helps with decreasing the fashion footprint by 85 per cent with each subscriber making it a game-changer that shapes the future of fashion and how we consume it,” stated Eltanawy.