E-commerce in particular, generally defined as the buying and selling of goods and services online, has attracted millions of dollars from local and international investors eager to tap into the potential of the Egyptian market, which, with its 31 million internet users, has the largest population of internet users in the MENA region.

"We believe that e-commerce is a particularly attractive segment of the technology market with very strong growth potential,” says Tarek Assaad, managing partner at Ideavelopers, an Egyptian venture capital fund investing in early-stage technology companies.

In 2011 Ideavelopers invested $10 million in nefsak.com, an e-commerce website selling a wide range of goods from a variety of brands. Launched in late 2008, Nefsak was the first website of its kind in Egypt that gained traction. “People thought we were crazy,” recalls founder Sherif Nassar.

The gamble seems to have paid-off, as Nefsak is now one of a trio of large multi-category online stores in Egypt, along with souq.com and jumia.com. Souq’s Egypt site was established by Dubai-based Jabbar Internet Group in early 2011, and is now the only such website to figure among the top forty visited in Egypt, according to web analytics site alexa.com.

Egypt’s jumia.com, launched in July of last year, was created by Rocket Internet - a German company that specialises in launching online retail sites in the style of Amazon at lightning speed in countries worldwide. Jumia, which was launched almost simultaneously in Egypt, Nigeria and Morocco, has since rocketed in the rankings of sites visited in Egypt, becoming number 100.

Jumia benefitted from the investment of tens of millions in Rocket Internet by JP Morgan bank. Multinational media group Naspers Limited and investment manager Tiger Global reportedly invested similarly large sums in Souq.

Yet as much as it seems to make