For years, Morocco’s e-commerce story was held back by a quiet but costly bottleneck: last-mile delivery. Orders were placed online, but fulfillment often broke down at the doorstep, missed deliveries, cash-on-delivery failures, fragmented courier networks, and limited visibility for merchants. Growth existed, but scalability did not.
Cathedis was built to solve that problem at the system level.
Founded by Imad Mansour Zekri, Cathedis is a Moroccan last-mile logistics company focused on making e-commerce delivery reliable, traceable, and commercially viable for businesses of all sizes. Rather than positioning itself as just another courier, Cathedis approached logistics as infrastructure, a layer that needed technology, coordination, and data discipline to function at scale.
A Founder Shaped by Operations
Imad Mansour Zekri’s path to logistics entrepreneurship was grounded in execution. With a background in supply chain management and experience working across warehousing and delivery operations, he observed a recurring disconnect: merchants were growing demand faster than logistics providers could handle complexity. Small and mid-sized businesses, in particular, were underserved—too large for informal delivery networks, yet too small to negotiate favorable terms with traditional couriers.
Cathedis emerged from this gap. The founding insight was simple but powerful: last-mile delivery in Morocco would not scale through manpower alone, it required orchestration, software, and merchant-centric design.
What Cathedis Actually Built
At its core, Cathedis is a technology-enabled last-mile logistics platform designed specifically for e-commerce and retail merchants. The company integrates routing optimization, delivery tracking, and merchant dashboards into a unified operational system.
Instead of merchants juggling multiple couriers or losing visibility once parcels leave the warehouse, Cathedis offers:
- Centralized order and delivery management
- Real-time shipment tracking and automated customer notifications
- Performance analytics to reduce failed deliveries
- A delivery network optimized for urban density and regional reach
This model directly addresses one of Morocco’s biggest e-commerce cost centers: failed or delayed deliveries, particularly in cash-on-delivery transactions.
Traction in a Growing Market
Morocco’s e-commerce market has grown steadily over the last five years, driven by rising smartphone penetration, improved digital payments, and changing consumer behavior. Cathedis has grown alongside this shift, now serving over 1,200 merchants and completing hundreds of thousands of deliveries annually across major cities including Casablanca, Rabat, and Tangier.
Its focus on SMEs and fast-growing digital brands differentiates it from legacy logistics firms built for bulk shipping rather than high-frequency consumer delivery. For merchants, Cathedis is not just a delivery partner, it is an operational extension.
Capital and Institutional Validation
In 2023, Cathedis raised approximately $713,000 from institutional investors including BMCE Capital Gestion and Beltone Venture Capital. While modest by global standards, the round was significant in a market where logistics startups are judged on operational discipline more than burn rate.
The funding has been deployed toward fleet expansion, warehouse capacity, and continued investment in routing and tracking technology, signals of a company focused on infrastructure depth.
Why Cathedis Matters Beyond Morocco
What makes Cathedis notable is not just its local success, but its replicability. Many African and emerging markets share similar logistics challenges: fragmented courier networks, limited address systems, and high delivery failure rates. Cathedis’ model; merchant-first, data-driven, and operationally grounded, offers a blueprint that can travel.
As e-commerce across Africa moves from experimentation to scale, last-mile infrastructure will determine winners. Cathedis is building that layer from Morocco outward.
The Long View
Cathedis represents a category of African startups that quietly build the pipes beneath the digital economy. It solves a foundational problem and does so with the patience and precision that logistics demands.
In Morocco’s next phase of digital commerce, companies like Cathedis will be essential.
