With a catchy yet visonnary motto that edicts that any project created in the world is a potential listing on its platform, the promising startup elbusines.com joined the rising tunisian startup ecosystem in the beginning of 2021.

Elbusines.com is a business-for-sale marketplace that aims to connect business owners with potential buyers and/or investors all over the Maghreb region.
The idea behind this project was born due to an observation concerning the buyouts’ market. In fact, thanks to the experience as well as the expertise of its two co-founders for over 25 years in fundraising as well as deal sourcing, the hurdles of the businesses exchange market came to light. 

Those hurdles amount to a mismatching between sellers and buyers: On one hand, we witness the lack of transparency due to the reliance on a word of month, which is far from being the most effective method and on the other hand sourcing deals can be a very exhausting and overwhelming long process for buyers. 
Adding to that, the asymmetry of information remains a great obstacle in the market of exchanging businesses meaning that the information isn’t spread equally and the data is lacking when it comes to a business valuation, which can impact the investment decision making process and make it biased. 
Last but not least, we witness a lack of a regional and sectorial barometer for the market of businesses exchange. 

In order to compensate for these shortcomings, elbusines.com offers a web platform that centralizes all the business opportunities and connects sellers and buyers in order to accelerate the selling process, becoming thus the first marketplace that connects business owners with not only potential buyers but also investors from all over the Maghreb region. 
This business-for-sale marketplace have multiple advantages. When it comes to sellers, the platform lists the business and boosts its exposure, keeps the details of the deal confidential until the introduction is made and guarantees the matchmaking with pre-approved potential buyers. 
Concerning the buyers, the platform customizes the search per sector and per type of transaction to facilitate the navigation, lists alerts according to buyers preferences and provides financial data to give a better understanding of the financial situation.

It goes without saying that elbusines.com bases its functioning on a disruptive approach that aims to reshape the role of traditional intermediaries that require important fees without any grantees that assure that the deal will be closed. Those intermediaries often tend to keep the reach of the information narrow. Besides facilitating the buying process, elbusines.com aims to create a climate of transparency where sellers and buyers can exchange businesses safely. In fact, a common misconception in the business exchange market is that the disposal of a business is often related to financial difficulties leading the owner to sell it, whereas in many cases it’s mostly due to the owners being attracted by new entrepreneurial opportunities or the absence of a successor that will adopt the business after the retirement of its original owner. This makes elbuisnes.com a new haven for entrepreneurs, as it provides them with all the required financial data and metrics in order to facilitate the evaluation of the business. 

Another crucial axis that elbusines.com emphasizes is the legal and financial support during the deal structuring. In fact, the Tunisian diaspora is becoming more interested in investing in Tunisian businesses operating in several sectors, however they often seek versatile support in order to finalize the deal properly which now became one of the missions of this startup.
  
In less than 2 years, elbusines.com succeeded in attracting more than 500 business owners who listed their businesses on the platform to negotiate a potential partnership, to raise funds or simply to sell their businesses. These businesses are operating in several sectors such as manufacturing, education, coffee shops and agribusiness. This diversity enabled more than 100 investors and buyers to engage with business owners in order to discuss potential partnerships. 
Thanks to its innovative and scalable concept, elbuisnes.com secured the startup act Label in April of 2021 paving its way to concretize its vision of democratizing the access to investment and business opportunities all over the Maghreb region.    

In a nutshell, elbusines.com owes the achievement of important milestones in a short amount of time to its two committed co-founders Hela Jelassi and Anis Borchani. Those two experts in investment & capital fundraising have been contributing in the betterment of the Tunisian entrepreneurial ecosystem since 2016 by raising more than 60 MTND for Tunisian companies and startups!