Swedish e-commerce startup Brantu will launch retail website in Egypt by October 2018. The website, called Elprices, will start as an online comparison tool and is expected to become an online store itself.

E-commerce venture-building startup Brantu announced it will launch new retail website Elprices in Egypt, next October. Elprices has soft launched as a price comparison website but Brantu plans to evolve it into the “largest online database for the Egyptian market’s offerings”. It will combine information on online and physical stores, provide data on price and product availability in local physical stores and, eventually, into an online store itself.

Elprices already has 400 sellers registered in the website and company representatives expect this number to rise to 1,000 within the next six months when all planned features are working. All additional features are expected to go live in July, before the official launch in October.

Brantu positions Elprices in opposition to other websites like Souq and Jumia in that elprices integrates sellers’ information and guarantees much more transparency throughout the buying process. Elprices has soft launched in April and, according to company representatives, it has received very positive feedback from both sellers and buyers.

Brantu says that it sees a lot of potential in the Egyptian e-commerce and retail sectors which, as in the rest of the African continent, is still at a very nascent phase. The government has, in the past months, announced a series of measures in order to double the number of e-commerce businesses in the next two years. Brantu has already invested $1.2 million in the Egyptian market and shareholders have signalled the intention to increase that number.