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STV’s Emerging Tech & AI Fund secures backing from Arcapita

Wamda

Press release:

STV, the emerging market venture capital tech investor, announced today that Arcapita, the global alternative investment firm, has invested in its Emerging Tech & AI Fund, backing both where AI is taking the region and STV as the partner to get there. 

The fund invests in high-potential, application-layer startups at their earliest stages, with a mandate to accelerate their growth across the Middle East and North Africa and beyond. Arcapita's entry into the fund as an investor adds to a growing base of regional institutional backers, joining Google and a broader group of semi-sovereign and endowment investors already deployed into the fund. 

The strong investor commitment seen in this new fund reflects the growing conviction among the region's established institutions in the potential of application-layer AI. This conviction is grounded in a clear global shift: in 2025, the application layer captured more than $19 billion in enterprise spending, with AI-native ventures outearning incumbents two-to-one. STV continues to see the region's technology ecosystem mature, creating the conditions for exceptional companies to scale at an accelerating pace. The collaboration between STV and Arcapita is also expected to create opportunities to connect emerging AI capabilities with established businesses, supporting potential commercial partnerships, technology adoption and knowledge exchange across their respective networks.

Since its launch, the fund has backed four AI-native startups: Sawt, a pioneer in Arabic-native AI voice agents for customer service and one of the fastest-growing B2B startups in the region; Clarity, an agentic AI platform for customer service analytics serving tier-1 customers at home and abroad; Signit, the leading AI legal startup in Saudi Arabia; and Stream, the billing and payments layer powering Saudi businesses.

September 10th 2026, 6:15 am

Zeal secures $10 million for global expansion

Wamda

Press release:

Zeal, the payments technology company bringing loyalty and merchant intelligence to payment terminals, today announced a $10 million funding round, taking its total funding to $14 million.

Zeal secures $10 million for global expansionThe company is not disclosing the participants in this round.

Zeal has signed contracts with payment acquirers globally to activate its technology on more than four million card machines over the next 24 months. The funding will support that rollout, deepen integrations across payment environments and expand the tools merchants and payment providers use to understand their businesses. Zeal expects its coverage to grow as it expands its acquirer relationships, with further large enterprise announcements to follow.

The customer relationship often stops at the payment

Online commerce has built customer relationships around connected transactions, loyalty programmes and customer data platforms. In physical commerce, those connections are harder to make. A purchase can pass through a payment terminal without becoming a useful customer insight for the merchant or a clear account signal for the payment provider.

The challenge is fragmentation. Terminal manufacturers, operating environments, payment applications and acquiring platforms each have their own integration requirements. Connecting that infrastructure to a retailer’s loyalty engine or customer data workflows takes more than adding another app at the counter. It requires coordination across the payments ecosystem and a supported route from the transaction to the systems that can use it.

One product, configured around the merchant

Zeal brings loyalty into supported payment-terminal journeys. Merchants can configure stamps or points, add optional phone-number capture, or connect an existing loyalty engine. These are configurations of one Zeal loyalty product, designed to fit different merchant programmes and payment setups.

The same environment gives merchants customer insight and gives acquirers, payment service providers and ISOs a clearer view of their merchant estate. Merchant Health highlights changes in transaction volume, terminal activity, payment declines and trading inactivity so teams can investigate what has changed and decide where to focus account conversations.

“A card payment should be the start of a more useful customer relationship,” said Omar Ebeid, co-founder and CEO of Zeal. “The hard part is connecting the fragmented infrastructure behind the counter. We have spent years working across that ecosystem. With signed acquirer contracts covering more than four million card machines, this funding supports the next 24 months of activation and the next stage of Zeal’s growth.”

Why this matters now

Payment terminals are becoming software platforms as well as acceptance devices. Android-based terminal ecosystems can now support business applications alongside payments, creating a practical route to bring loyalty and customer insight into checkout. The commercial challenge is making those capabilities work across fragmented payment environments and delivering them through trusted acquirer relationships.

Merchants want loyalty that fits the way customers already pay, alongside insight they can use to improve the business. Payment providers need a proposition that supports those merchants beyond processing a transaction. The opportunity is to bring the customer experience and the account relationship into the same conversation.

Zeal’s distribution model works through payment acquirers and other payment partners. That creates a route to existing terminal estates while allowing each deployment to account for the provider’s platform, the terminal environment and the merchant’s requirements. The signed contracts establish the planned activation footprint; implementation will take place over the next 24 months.

“A useful product at checkout depends on the infrastructure underneath it,” said Belal Mohamed, co-founder and CTO of Zeal. “Our work is to connect terminal journeys, loyalty and merchant insight across different payment environments so partners can bring a consistent proposition to their merchants.”

Earlier backing and recognition

Zeal’s earlier backers include Saudi Arabia’s Raed Ventures, Pinnacle Capital and CUR8 Capital. Raed Ventures’ Raed III fund counts Saudi Venture Capital (SVC) among its investors.

Zeal was named Team of the Year at the UK FinTech Awards 2026, where co-founder and CTO Belal Mohamed was named Innovator of the Year. The company is also part of the Scale Up by Endeavor programme.

September 10th 2026, 6:15 am

PayTabs strikes $100 million+ deal for Amazon Payment Services MENA

Wamda

Press release:

 Saudi Arabia's PayTabs Group and Amazon Payment Services have agreed to a transaction that would transfer Amazon's Middle East and North Africa payments operations to PayTabs — a deal that would significantly consolidate the region's fragmented payments landscape.

PayTabs has spent years building banking connectivity, regulatory licenses and AI-driven payment infrastructure largely outside the spotlight. The transaction would bring that strategy into sharper focus, significantly expanding the Saudi-born company's scale and position in the regional payments market.

Both parties have approved the transaction, the deal valued north of $100 million. The agreement would cement PayTabs' position as the largest MENA payments infrastructure provider with proprietary end-to-end solutions spanning payment processing, automated switching and payouts on a single platform.

Continuity is expected to be a priority, with minimal disruption anticipated during the integration, alongside faster onboarding and stronger local compliance across the combined operation.

The deal would significantly increase PayTabs' regional scale, with the combined entity expected to process more than SAR 150 billion annually.

September 8th 2026, 9:55 am

Kuwait's Dawraty secures $2 million seed backed by Qatar Development Bank

Wamda

Press release:

Kuwait-based education technology startup Dawraty has secured an investment from Qatar Development Bank (QDB) as part of a $2 million Seed funding round aimed at supporting its regional expansion across healthcare education, professional certification and exam preparation.

The round values Dawraty at $10 million and remains open to additional co-investors, with its final close expected at the end of November 2026. QDB's investment followed a due diligence process conducted through its 2026 Accelerator Program.

Founded by Dr Ryan Dougherty and Hamad AlThunayan, Dawraty operates a bilingual, AI-powered learning platform that enables institutions to deliver and track accredited education and professional training in Arabic and English.

Rather than focusing primarily on direct-to-consumer learning, Dawraty works with universities, medical colleges, professional training academies, hospital groups, school networks and government training bodies. The company enters new markets through institutional partnerships and reseller agreements.

Dawraty currently operates across Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Jordan. Its institutional partners include Kuwait University, the University of Bahrain, Bahrain Institute of Banking and Finance, Belvedere Group and Johns Hopkins for continuing medical education.

The startup is also expanding its presence in Qatar, where it recently signed a master partnership and reseller agreement with the Qatar Finance and Business Academy (QFBA). The agreement represents Dawraty's first contracted institutional revenue in Qatar and will make its platform available to students and professionals in the country's business sector.

The new funding will support Dawraty's expansion across its existing and new markets as it scales its bilingual learning infrastructure and broadens its offering across healthcare and other areas of professional education.

September 8th 2026, 9:55 am

Saudi AI startup Gaia secures $1.5 million to scale enterprise platform

Wamda

Press release:

Gaia was founded by Badr Al-Malluh, Co-Founder and CEO, and Mohammad Rababah, Co-Founder and CPTO. Gaia is a Saudi sovereign AI platform for enterprises that connects knowledge, files, systems, emails and workflows into a single operational intelligence layer where data never leaves the organisation. 

Employees search across everything the company knows but with permission awareness so no one sees what they don't already have access to, get generative AI answers grounded in their own data with cited sources; and hand cross-system work to AI agents with important steps routed to a person for approval. 

Enterprises today operate across disconnected systems, including email, files, CRM, ERP, and other business applications. Industry research shows that 60% of employees cannot find the information they need at the company, 30% of their time is lost gathering context, and 70% of leaders of large enterprises cite data security as a barrier to AI adoption. This fragmentation leads to delayed and wrong decisions, duplicated work, repetitive manual processes, compliance risks, and the loss of institutional knowledge when employees leave.

Gaia becomes the organisation's one brain to find, understand, and act on their knowledge. Enterprise Search provides instant, cited answers across every connected system, showing exactly which file, thread, or record the information came from. The AI Assistant is generative AI that knows the business, delivering answers grounded in the organisation's knowledge base with inline links to original sources. Purpose-built AI Agents go beyond answering questions to complete tasks across applications, automate recurring work such as summaries and reports, and run full workflows. Gaia remains permission-aware, while high-risk agent actions are routed for human approval before execution.

“Enterprise knowledge is often fragmented across systems, emails, documents, and teams, limiting an organisation's ability to operate effectively. Gaia transforms that knowledge into actionable intelligence, enabling enterprises to make faster better decisions, improve productivity, and automate work securely without the fear of data ever leaving the organisation."

 Badr Al-Malluh, Co-Founder and CEO of Gaia

The company continues developing its platform and working with enterprises to apply AI to real operational challenges.

As Saudi organisations accelerate their digital transformation in line with Vision 2030, Gaia aims to provide the trusted AI foundation they need to operate more efficiently, strengthen decision-making, and unlock the full value of their organisational data.

September 8th 2026, 9:55 am

Keep Converting closes $2 million pre-seed led by Nuwa Capital, COTU Ventures

Wamda

Press release:

Keep Converting, the AI-native conversion optimisation platform for e-commerce, today exited stealth with a $2 million pre-seed round led by Nuwa Capital and COTU Ventures and disclosed an average 64% conversion-rate lift across active client deployments in the United States, Europe, and the Gulf.

E-commerce brands have spent a decade competing on traffic — SEO, paid ads, influencer reach — and AI-driven discovery is now reshaping where shoppers come from: ChatGPT answers product questions, and Perplexity surfaces brands. The channel keeps changing, but one problem hasn't been solved: when a shopper finally lands on a product page, 98% leave without buying. Keep Converting was built to close that gap.

Keep Converting is an AI-powered platform that builds a fully personalised website experience for every individual visitor in real time. A shopper arriving from a ChatGPT recommendation for “the best running shoes for sore feet” sees a product page that leads with comfort, support, and runner reviews. A shopper arriving from a TikTok ad for the same brand sees an entirely different page — built around the moment, the creator, and the trend that brought them there. Same product, same brand, two different experiences — generated and served instantly, refined on every visit.

The platform has produced thousands of product page variants for brands across consumer electronics, home appliances, beauty, fragrance, lifestyle, and accessories. On a single product page, multiple AI-generated versions run side by side, with Keep Converting's closed-loop system continuously promoting the version most likely to convert and generating fresh variants as it learns. Keep Converting is pre-integrated with Shopify, WooCommerce, Adobe Commerce, Zid, Salla, and other major commerce platforms — client setup takes approximately 10 minutes, and most brands see measurable conversion lift within two weeks of going live.

“Everyone says AI will kill the merchant website. We bet the opposite. Shoppers still want to visit the site, see the real product, and connect with it before they buy. So Keep Converting transforms every product page into the form that speaks to each shopper and lets the site win the AI shift instead of just surviving it. We've now proven it works, and the next chapter is bringing it to every merchant,” said Mohammad El Mougi, founder and CEO of Keep Converting.

Mougi previously served as Chief Product Officer at Vezeeta, the leading health-tech platform in the Middle East, and earlier led marketing at Vodafone. Co-founder Manuel Prinz previously served as Head of Product at TikTok Shop US and on the product management team at Walmart.

“At TikTok Shop and Walmart, I watched the world's best commerce teams ship one personalisation framework after another and still hit the same wall — a recommendation engine here, a banner test there, none of it touching the page itself,” said Prinz. “Keep Converting is the first platform that rebuilds the actual experience per shopper. That's the unlock.”

The $2 million pre-seed will fund onboarding the next wave of merchants and growing the engineering team behind the platform's cross-client intelligence — every visit anywhere on the network sharpens performance everywhere. Merchants interested in joining the next cohort can request access at keepconverting.ai.

September 8th 2026, 9:55 am

Carly secures investment from Pinnacle to support next phase of growth

Wamda

Press release:

Saudi Arabia-based Pinnacle Growth & Secondary Fund has invested in automotive commerce platform Carly through a transaction combining primary and secondary shares. The financial terms of the investment were not disclosed.

The transaction forms part of Pinnacle’s strategy of investing in growth-stage companies using flexible investment structures, including both primary capital and secondary share purchases.

Carly operates an automotive commerce platform in Saudi Arabia, serving a growing customer base and facilitating transactions through its digital platform.

Pinnacle said the investment is intended to support Carly’s next phase of growth and strengthen its position in Saudi Arabia’s automotive market, while contributing to the development of the Kingdom’s technology and mobility ecosystem.

Pinnacle Capital is a Saudi investment company headquartered in Riyadh and licensed by the Capital Market Authority to conduct investment management and securities arranging activities.

September 8th 2026, 9:55 am

Velents enters Bahrain through strategic partnership with stc Bahrain

Wamda

Press release:

Building on its rapid regional expansion across Saudi Arabia and Egypt, AI startup Velents is driving its growth momentum forward by expanding into Bahrain following a strategic agreement signed with stc Bahrain on the sidelines of LEAP 2026 in Riyadh. The partnership aims to launch an exclusive suite of Agentic AI product bundles tailored for enterprise customers across the Kingdom.

This milestone partnership solidifies Velents' position as a key pioneer bringing autonomous digital agents to Middle Eastern enterprises. By integrating Velents' applied artificial intelligence directly into stc Bahrain's extensive B2B ecosystem, the partnership bypasses traditional third-party vendor friction to deliver localised, sovereign AI tools directly to local businesses.

“Every telecom in the region is talking about becoming a techco. stc Bahrain just did it. From today, an enterprise in Bahrain can get autonomous AI agents the same way it gets connectivity — from one local provider, under one agreement, governed by local rules,” Mohamed Gaber, Founder and CEO of Velents, said.

He added, "We built Velents on a simple principle: AI should run wherever regulation requires, in the language the customer actually speaks. stc Bahrain shares that conviction, and together we’re giving Bahraini enterprises access to AI that lives inside the Kingdom’s own digital infrastructure — not rented from abroad.”

Through Velents’ autonomous agentic AI capabilities and stc Bahrain’s robust technological infrastructure, enterprise clients can seamlessly deploy digital agents to automate complex workflows, streamline manual operations, and accelerate decision-making.

​Hesham Mustafa, Chief Business and Wholesale Officer at stc Bahrain, added, "Our agreement with Velents brings practical and powerful AI capabilities directly to Bahrain’s enterprise sector. This initiative gives local organisations the autonomous tools required to boost operational efficiency, compete on a regional scale, and drive real digital performance."

​The expansion underscores Velents’ ongoing growth trajectory as it scales its AI ecosystem across the MENA region, equipping enterprises with autonomous digital agents without the complexity of managing multiple third-party vendors.

September 7th 2026, 11:23 am

Phoenix Venture Partners leads $3.5 million round in UAE fintech Sav

Wamda

Press release:

Phoenix Venture Partners Limited (PVP), an Abu Dhabi-based venture capital fund manager, today announced that it has led a US$3.5 million Pre-Series A financing round in Sav, an autonomous consumer fintech platform leveraging artificial intelligence and open finance infrastructure to help consumers save, invest, manage credit, and build wealth through a unified financial ecosystem.

The financing also included participation from several co-investors drawn from the investor base of Phoenix Venture Partners Innovation Fund CEIC Limited (PVPIF).

Founded by Purvi Munot and Mithil Ajmera, Sav is building a lifestyle-led financial platform that enables consumers to aggregate and manage all their financial accounts in one place while automating key financial decisions through its proprietary AI infrastructure, SavCore.

The platform combines savings, investments, gold, payments, , and commerce into a single ecosystem. Operating under a DFSA Category 4 license in the UAE, Sav is expanding across the GCC, with Saudi Arabia representing a key strategic growth market.

The investment reflects PVP's conviction that the next wave of fintech innovation in the region will emerge not from payment infrastructure itself, but from the financial products and consumer experiences being built on top of it.

"Purvi and Mithil are exactly the type of founders we seek to back: ambitious, visionary, and relentlessly execution-focused," said Steve Khayat, Founder and CEO of Phoenix Venture Partners.

Commenting on the broader evolution of fintech in the region, he added: "The next chapter of GCC fintech won't be defined by payments. It will be defined by what gets built on top of payment rails: lending, insurance, wealth management, and embedded finance.

Infrastructure creates platforms. Platforms create ecosystems.

We believe Sav is exceptionally positioned to capitalize on this shift through its AI-first approach to financial wellness, saving, and wealth creation."

PVP's investment thesis is further informed by firsthand operational experience within the region's fintech ecosystem.

"While BNPL changed how consumers access spending, we believe the next major shift will be access to AI-led money management)," said Faris Al-Obaid, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Phoenix Venture Partners.

Expanding on the firm's investment thesis, he added: "Sav is helping consumers build wealth rather than simply finance consumption. That's a powerful long-term trend and one we believe remains significantly underappreciated."

Having played a direct role in the scaling journey of one of the GCC's leading Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) platforms, Faris believes the next major fintech category is already beginning to emerge.

Sav's Co-founder and CEO, Purvi Munot, welcomed Phoenix Venture Partners as the lead investor in the round: She added: “A generation is building wealth for the first time, across more borders than any before it, and the financial system was never designed for them. Their accounts sit in different countries, their credit history resets every time they move, and no institution ever sees the whole picture. We are building the platform that does: one that understands a person's entire financial life and acts on it, so their money works as hard and moves as freely as they do. From our first conversations, the PVP team understood that ambition. This partnership will accelerate our expansion into Saudi Arabia, deepen our AI capabilities, and take us closer to a future where financial intelligence is not a privilege reserved for the few, but infrastructure available to everyone.”

Sav has raised approximately US$2.5 million in previous funding rounds and has demonstrated strong early growth supported by efficient customer acquisition economics and diversified revenue streams spanning interchange income, wealth management fees, commerce commissions, and subscriptions.

The US$3.5 million Pre-Series A round will primarily support the company's go-to-market expansion into Saudi Arabia, while accelerating product development, AI infrastructure, and user acquisition across the GCC.

September 7th 2026, 11:23 am

Creative Investments Holding secures $20 million first close, targets $50 million

Wamda

Press release:

Creative Investments Holding (“Creative Holding”), an investment company dedicated to the creative industries, today announced the conclusion of its founding round, with initial aggregate commitments of USD 20 million at first close subject to definitive agreements, targeting a total raise of up to USD 50 million.

Creative Holding is being established by veteran luxury and brands executive Mohamed Talaat Khalifa (“MTK”) through his investment arm Leo Equities, in partnership with founding investors Mr. Onsi Sawiris, Mr. Ali Abubakr, and the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency (“MSMEDA”).

Creative Holding is led by MTK, alongside seasoned finance executive and arts specialist Heba Makhlouf, who leads the platform's finance, governance and compliance functions.

With presence across Cairo, Abu Dhabi and Milan, Creative Holding combines deep regional understanding with European creativity, operational excellence, and long-term investment discipline. The platform will acquire, create and grow distinctive businesses rooted in culture, primarily in Egypt and the wider MENA region with a clear focus on four interconnected creative domains: food and culinary experiences; hospitality; fashion and retail; and lifestyle and entertainment. Creative Holding acquires controlling and strategic stakes and provides growth capital and operational infrastructure to build enduring international champions.

Creative Holding is structured as a long-term capital holding company with a targeted public listing on ADX, Tadawul or LSE within five to seven years.

“The region has world-class heritage, craftsmanship and taste, what it has lacked is a patient, institutional home to grow its brands into international champions. Creative Investments Holding is that home. Culture is our capital,” said Mohamed Talaat Khalifa, Founder and Chief Executive Officer.

The platform launches with an active pipeline, including a potential first acquisition in the heritage food sector and the evaluation of properties for the first Casa Leo boutique hotel, Creative Holding's proprietary hospitality concept.

September 7th 2026, 11:23 am

MENA startup funding jumps to $375 million in August 2026

Wamda

Startup funding across the Middle East and North Africa more than doubled in August 2026, even as dealmaking slowed sharply, with 27 startups raising a combined $375 million.

The total was 117% higher than July and 11% above August 2025. Yet the deal count fell 40% month-on-month, highlighting how heavily the month’s performance depended on a small number of large transactions.

The biggest was Moove’s $250 million Series C, which alone accounted for two-thirds of all capital deployed in August.

Still, the composition of funding marked a significant improvement from July. Debt accounted for only about 2% of total capital in August, compared with 56% the previous month, meaning the rebound was overwhelmingly driven by equity rather than structured financing.

The UAE returns to the top

The UAE reclaimed its position as MENA’s most-funded startup ecosystem in August, overtaking Saudi Arabia, which had led the regional rankings in July.

UAE startups raised $362 million across 13 deals, accounting for nearly 97% of all capital deployed in the region during the month. The total was largely driven by Moove’s $250 million round and Fasset’s $68 million Series C.

Saudi Arabia ranked a distant second, with six startups securing a combined $10.25 million.

Egypt, traditionally one of MENA’s three largest startup markets, recorded no startup funding rounds in August. Jordan moved into third place with $2 million from a single transaction.

Capital also reached some of the region’s smaller ecosystems. Five Omani startups attracted an estimated $500,000, while Iraq recorded a disclosed $150,000 round. Bahrain registered one transaction estimated at $100,000.

Moove pushes mobility to the top as fintech slips

Moove’s megadeal propelled mobility to the top of the sector rankings, with the company’s $250 million round accounting for all funding allocated to the sector.

Fintech slipped to second place despite attracting $83.8 million across six startups. Enterprise AI ranked third, with six startups raising a combined $21 million, while healthtech companies secured $9 million across two deals.

The sector rankings again underline the extent to which a single large transaction can reshape monthly funding data, particularly when overall deal activity remains subdued.

Later-stage funding returns

August also marked the return of sizable later-stage rounds.

Moove and Fasset raised a combined $318 million through two Series C transactions, accounting for almost 85% of all capital deployed during the month.

Early-stage companies nevertheless continued to dominate by deal count, with 22 startups at pre-seed, seed and Series A stages raising a combined $38 million.

Debt financing played only a limited role during the month. Naran’s $10 million financing was announced as a mix of debt and equity, while overall debt represented about 2% of August’s total funding.

B2B startups continue to capture most capital

Business-focused startups retained their position as investors’ preferred destination, attracting $282.5 million across 15 transactions, or about three-quarters of all capital raised in August.

Business-to-consumer startups secured $87 million across six deals, while companies operating across both B2B and B2C models raised $5.5 million through another six transactions.

Funding remains overwhelmingly male-led

The gender funding gap remained pronounced.

Male-founded startups secured $361 million across 22 deals, accounting for more than 96% of all capital deployed during the month.

Female-founded startups raised $8.5 million across two transactions, while mixed-gender founding teams attracted $5.5 million through three deals.

A concentrated rebound

August delivered a substantially stronger headline than July, and the sharp reduction in debt financing provides a more encouraging signal for equity investment. But the recovery remains highly concentrated.

One company accounted for two-thirds of the month’s funding, the UAE captured almost 97% of total capital, and the number of transactions fell 40% from July.

With one month remaining in the third quarter, MENA startups have raised about $547.6 million since the beginning of July — roughly half the amount deployed during July and August 2025.

The region also continues to operate against a volatile geopolitical backdrop, with renewed US-Iran hostilities and disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz weighing on markets and investor visibility.

August therefore offers evidence that investors remain willing to deploy substantial equity into select MENA companies, but it does not yet indicate a broad-based recovery. September’s deal flow will show whether the rebound can extend beyond megadeals and translate into wider investor participation.

These monthly reports are a collaboration between Wamda and Digital Digest.

September 7th 2026, 11:23 am

Salla acquires Saudi payments company Paylink

Wamda

Press release:

Salla, the leading Saudi platform for e-commerce solutions, announced its acquisition of Paylink, a company specialising in payment solutions, in a strategic step aimed at enhancing Salla's capabilities in the fintech sector and expanding the scope of financial solutions that enable merchants to manage and grow their businesses.

Paylink is a Saudi fintech company that carries the "Saudi Tech" label and is licensed by the Saudi Central Bank to provide e-commerce payment services. Over the past years, it has developed a specialised technical infrastructure in electronic payment solutions serving companies and merchants in the Kingdom.

This acquisition is part of Salla's strategy to build an integrated ecosystem that supports merchants at various stages of their business growth and to expand the platform's role beyond enabling sales and operations, reaching more advanced and smarter financial services built around the needs of merchants and their businesses.

By combining the capabilities of Salla and Paylink, Salla seeks to develop a more integrated experience for receiving and managing payments, whether in e-commerce or physical sales channels, paving the way for providing smart payment solutions at points of sale, including SoftPOS technologies that expand the merchant's ability to receive payments easily and flexibly wherever the sale occurs.

Paylink's capabilities also support Salla's direction towards enabling merchants to reach customers outside the local market and receive payments from around the world, as its infrastructure supports international sales cases, multiple currencies, and various payment methods, opening up greater opportunities for Saudi brands to grow and expand regionally and globally.

The step combines Salla's deep experience in the commerce sector and the needs of tens of thousands of merchants with the technical and regulatory expertise developed by Paylink in the payments sector, establishing a new phase of integration between commerce and financial services and giving the merchant a system more capable of keeping pace with their business growth and expansion into new channels and markets.

Nawaf Hariri, Founder and CEO of Salla, said:

"Since Salla's inception, our goal has been to enable merchants to build and grow their businesses through an integrated ecosystem that reduces complexity and provides them with the tools they need to grow. We believe that financial services are a natural extension of this vision; our acquisition of Paylink adds important capabilities and expertise to Salla that will help us build smarter and more integrated payment solutions and enable our merchants to receive payments wherever their customers are, whether online or at points of sale, inside and outside the Kingdom."

The acquisition reflects Salla's continued investment in the infrastructure for the future of commerce and the development of an ecosystem that links commerce, payments, and financial services in a more integrated manner, supporting the growth of Saudi brands within the Kingdom and helping them expand regionally and reach new markets and customers.

September 4th 2026, 9:54 am

Saudi autotech Syarah raises $12 million from Impact46

Wamda

Press release:

Saudi online automotive marketplace Syarah has raised $12 million in a new investment from Impact46 to expand its presence across Saudi Arabia’s new and used car market. The company did not disclose the stage of the funding round.

Syarah operates a digital car-buying platform that enables consumers to browse new and used vehicles, complete much of the purchasing process remotely and have their selected vehicle delivered directly to them, reducing the need to visit a traditional dealership.

The company already serves customers across all regions of Saudi Arabia and has handled thousands of purchases, according to Arab Founders. Its model combines an online automotive marketplace with nationwide vehicle delivery, giving customers outside major cities access to a wider selection of vehicles.

The fresh capital will support Syarah’s efforts to reach more customers across the Kingdom and further develop its digital platform and delivery operations as it scales nationwide. The company has not provided a detailed breakdown of how the investment will be allocated.

September 4th 2026, 9:54 am

Rwaj raises $1.2 million to scale live shopping marketplace

Wamda

Press release:

Jeddah-based live shopping startup Rwaj has raised $1.2 million (SAR 4.5 million) in a pre-Seed funding round as it looks to scale its live social shopping and auction marketplace across the region. The investors participating in the round were not disclosed.

Founded in 2024 by Taher Alblowe, Rwaj provides a social commerce platform that allows sellers to livestream products and offer them either at fixed prices or through timed auctions where buyers can bid in real time.

The startup brings several elements of the live commerce process into a single platform, including livestreaming, bidding, payments and shipping. Payments are held in escrow until buyers confirm delivery, while shipping is handled through integrated carriers. Buyers can pay using Mada, Apple Pay or cards.

Rather than focusing on a single product category, Rwaj is designed for products that benefit from live demonstrations. The platform also incorporates social features that allow buyers to follow sellers, discover new merchants and return to future livestreams.

The company will use the new funding to accelerate product development and expand its presence across the region.

September 4th 2026, 9:54 am

Saudi FlyAkeed secures $25.15 million to scale enterprise travel platform

Wamda

Press release:

Saudi Arabia-based corporate travel technology platform FlyAkeed has secured SAR 94.3 million ($25.15 million) in growth funding, combining an equity investment with Murabaha sukuk financing. The financing was announced at LEAP 2026 in Riyadh.

The equity portion was led by Sanabil Investments, an investment company wholly owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), with participation from Artal Capital, stc Group’s corporate venture capital fund tali ventures, and Aljazira Capital. Artal Capital also led the Murabaha sukuk financing, providing FlyAkeed with a Shariah-compliant financing structure alongside the equity investment.

Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Riyadh, FlyAkeed operates a corporate travel management platform designed to centralise business travel processes. Employees can book flights, hotels and ground transportation within company policies, while businesses can automate approvals and manage travel policies, workflows and expenditure through a single dashboard.

The company currently serves more than 150 corporate clients across Saudi Arabia, including PIF, Maaden, Golf Saudi and the National Housing Company.

FlyAkeed plans to use the funding primarily to support a new embedded deferred-payment offering for large enterprises. The product is designed to allow corporate customers to settle travel invoices under more flexible payment terms.

The company is targeting Saudi Arabia’s expanding corporate travel market, where business travel expenditure exceeded $10 billion in 2024 and is projected to roughly double by 2033, according to figures cited by FlyAkeed.

“Corporate travel in our region still runs on phone calls, WhatsApp groups and spreadsheets. We are replacing that with an operating system: every trip inside policy, every riyal visible in real time, every approval in seconds,” said Bassam Almohammadi, founder and CEO of FlyAkeed.

“Large enterprises don’t just want better software; they want better payment terms. Now we give them both,” he added.

September 3rd 2026, 12:21 pm

3C Coding School raises $3 million seed for Saudi expansion

Wamda

Press release:

3C Coding School, a premier platform specialising in coding, technology, and artificial intelligence education for children and youth, has officially closed its $3 million Seed funding round. The direct equity investment was spearheaded by MRG Economic Group, led by Egyptian business leader Mahmoud Ramadan, with participation from prominent investor Amr Saad alongside a group of strategic angel investors.

This capital injection marks a major milestone in 3C Coding School's trajectory. It comes on the heels of impressive operational momentum, with the company expanding its user base to over 120,000 students and delivering a 230% surge in revenue. These metrics underscore the booming regional demand for specialised tech education, highlighting the strength of the market opportunity and the scalability of 3C’s underlying model.

Redefining Tech Education: Moving Beyond Traditional Coding

Co-founded in 2015 by engineers Hossam Hosny and Ahmed Khallaf, 3C Coding School was built to disrupt traditional computer science education for young learners. Moving beyond standard code writing and syntax, the platform focuses on fostering higher-order skills, equipping students with structured logical reasoning, creative problem-solving, and critical thinking.

Over the years, 3C has engineered a comprehensive learning ecosystem featuring diverse educational tracks across cutting-edge fields, including web and mobile app development, data science, AI, machine learning, game development, and cybersecurity.

The school's pedagogical framework centres on hands-on, project-based, and interactive learning. Curricula are carefully tailored to suit distinct age groups and skill levels, ensuring students not only acquire practical coding capabilities but also cultivate a mindset grounded in innovation and continuous inquiry.

To date, 3C has reached more than 120,000 young learners while maintaining a strong financial growth trajectory of 230% in revenue, proving both the efficacy of its curriculum and the growing appetite for specialised digital literacy among youth.

Strategic Roadmap: Saudi Market Expansion & Infrastructure Enhancement

3C Coding School plans to deploy the fresh capital into two core strategic pillars designed to catalyse its next growth phase: expanding into Saudi Arabia and accelerating the deployment of an AI-powered learning platform.

Establishing a Footprint in Saudi Arabia

Regional expansion into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia stands at the forefront of 3C's immediate goals. The company aims to establish a formidable market presence, capitalising on the Kingdom’s rapidly accelerating digital economy, burgeoning EdTech sector, and skyrocketing demand for future-ready tech skills.

3C is actively refining its market entry strategy to deliver tailored educational tracks aligned with local requirements. The company plans to leverage strategic local partnerships to rapidly scale its student body and customer base across the Kingdom.

This move forms part of a broader vision to transition 3C from an Egypt-focused market leader into a multinational EdTech powerhouse capable of replicating its model across multiple high-growth Middle Eastern markets.

Next-Generation Tech: AI-Driven Personalized Learning

To redefine the student experience, 3C is channelling a significant portion of the investment into building a state-of-the-art, AI-powered learning platform.

By leveraging proprietary artificial intelligence algorithms, the new platform will analyse individual learning habits, assess real-time progress, support instructors, and dynamically adjust course content to match each student’s unique pace and capabilities.

Through this technological evolution, 3C aims to move past static e-learning formats, delivering an intelligent, highly personalised, and scalable educational framework capable of seamlessly serving millions of students across diverse geographies.

This investment in core infrastructure ensures that 3C's offerings remain data-driven, adaptive, and fully aligned with the fast-moving future of global educational technology.

Growth Highlights at a Glance

3C Coding School’s recent trajectory reflects a powerful growth story in the Middle Eastern tech ecosystem:

Looking ahead, 3C aims to leverage this foundation to solidify its market position, prioritising Saudi Arabia as its primary growth vector while continuing to innovate at the intersection of AI and education.

A Strategic Turning Point

Reflecting on the company’s trajectory, Hossam Hosny, Founder of 3C Coding School, stated: "When we launched 3C in 2015, we were driven by a core belief that technology would become an indispensable part of every child’s future. Coding isn't just for future software engineers; it is a fundamental medium for teaching kids how to think, innovate, and solve complex problems."

He added: “Over the years, through constant learning and development, we have built a vibrant ecosystem encompassing more than 120,000 students. For us, that number represents far more than market traction; it represents over 120,000 lives impacted and empowered to navigate the future. This funding round marks a strategic turning point, not merely because of the financial backing, but because of the deep confidence our investors have placed in our vision to build a transformative EdTech platform for the entire region."

Hosny highlighted that securing institutional backing from MRG Economic Group, led by Mahmoud Ramadan, alongside Amr Saad and leading angel investors, brings far more than capital. It supplies strategic depth, market access, and valuable industry expertise necessary for large-scale expansion.

"We don't view the next phase as simple geographic expansion," Hosny added. "It is an opportunity to reinvent how the next generation interacts with and learns technology. That is why AI development lies at the very heart of our forward-looking strategy. Our ultimate mission is to bring accessible, high-impact tech education to millions of young minds across the region, transforming them from mere consumers of technology into the creators and innovators of tomorrow."

Stepping Into an Ambitious New Chapter

Echoing this enthusiasm, Ahmed Khallaf, Co-Founder of 3C Coding School, noted: "Securing a $3 million Seed round is a landmark milestone for 3C. However, we see this investment not as a final destination but as the launching pad for an even more ambitious chapter in our journey."

Khallaf underscored that since day one, 3C's mission transcended standard coding instruction, striving instead to reshape how young minds approach challenges and harness technology to shape their world.

He pointed out that reaching 120,000 students and driving 230% revenue growth validates the strong market demand for high-calibre tech education across Egypt and the broader MENA region.

"This strategic investment, led by MRG Economic Group and our esteemed investment partners, gives us the firepower to accelerate our technical infrastructure, elevate our core product offerings, enter the Saudi market, and fast-track the deployment of our AI platform," Khallaf concluded. "The future of education will be personalised, intelligent, and deeply integrated with technology. 3C is committed to leading that transformation, building one of the region's top EdTech platforms, and equipping millions of students with the critical skills required to excel in a rapidly evolving digital world."

September 3rd 2026, 12:21 pm

OmniOps, HPE sign MoU at LEAP to advance sovereign AI solutions

Wamda

Press release:

OmniOps, Saudi Arabia's sovereign AI infrastructure technology company, today announced at LEAP the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with HPE to develop sovereign AI solutions that bring together HPE’s ‘Saudi Made’ infrastructure and OmniOps’ Saudi-developed AI platforms and in-country deployment capabilities. Aligned with HPE’s Saudi Made, Developed & Deployed (SMDD) initiative, the collaboration aims to help government and enterprise organisations accelerate AI adoption while strengthening digital sovereignty and local technology capabilities.

Combined with OmniOps' deployment infrastructure and enterprise AI management capabilities, this collaboration creates an end-to-end stack in which the servers, infrastructure and AI management layers are built in Saudi Arabia and operating within its jurisdiction.

While data residency and local model deployment have become central to sovereign AI strategies, organizations are increasingly looking further down the technology stack at the infrastructure their workloads run on. By integrating locally produced compute with locally operated AI infrastructure and software, OmniOps is extending that control from hardware through deployment and enterprise AI management.

Through the collaboration, HPE and OmniOps plan to combine locally produced infrastructure with Saudi-developed AI platforms and in-country deployment expertise to help organizations move from AI experimentation to production. Reflecting the vision of the SMDD initiative, the companies aim to develop sovereign AI solutions that can be validated, deployed and supported within the Kingdom, while creating new opportunities to commercialize Saudi technology innovation. 

"Achieving sovereignty across an entity’s tech stack means careful consideration at every level,” Mohammed Altassan, Founding CEO of OmniOps, commented: “Today, our customers across government, aviation and financial services require more control and transparency. Running our own software on servers produced here in the Kingdom means we can answer all three of their immediate needs: where their data sits, who built the platform running on top of it and where the hardware underneath it comes from. That is what a genuinely sovereign stack looks like, and it is what the National Strategy for Data and AI was built to enable."

Mohammad Alrehaili, VP & Managing Director for the Middle East at HPE, said: “This collaboration with OmniOps brings the vision of Saudi Made, Developed & Deployed to life and will give organizations in Saudi Arabia a strong foundation for deploying sovereign AI at scale. Together we will help accelerate AI adoption and support the continued growth of the Kingdom’s technology ecosystem.”

OmniOps' offering is anchored by Bunyan, its AI inference platform, which enables organizations to deploy and manage AI workloads across cloud, on-premises and air-gapped environments according to their security, regulatory and operational requirements. Bunyan gives organizations access to leading LLMs hosted in the Kingdom, alongside the infrastructure and building blocks needed to securely adopt and deploy GenAI across their organizations. Its hardware-agnostic architecture also allows OmniOps to integrate locally produced compute while preserving customer choice across different AI infrastructure providers.

September 3rd 2026, 12:21 pm

Saudi Nayla lands $18 million to expand micro-business financing

Wamda

Press release:

Saudi Arabia-based fintech Nayla has closed an approximately $18 million pre-Series A funding round comprising a mix of equity and debt financing, the company announced at LEAP 2026 in Riyadh.

The equity portion of the round was led by Idrisi Ventures, with participation from Suhail Ventures and other strategic investors, while BLOMINVEST led the debt facility.

Nayla was built through Sanabil Studio and said the latest financing makes it the first venture launched by the studio to successfully close an institutional funding round.

The company provides AI-powered lending solutions aimed at expanding access to fast, digital financing for micro-businesses across Saudi Arabia.

Nayla plans to use the new capital to accelerate the development of its AI-powered lending solutions and significantly expand the availability of financing to micro-businesses across the Kingdom.

The company said its expansion is aligned with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 objectives and the role of micro-enterprises in the Kingdom’s economic development.

Nayla thanked its investors and partners for their backing and said it would continue developing its financing products to support the growth of its customers and their businesses.

September 3rd 2026, 12:21 pm

Saudi AQAR plans up to $480,000 strategic investment in Syria’s Doushesh

Wamda

Press release:

Saudi Arabia-based real estate platform AQAR has signed a memorandum of understanding with Syrian classifieds company Doushesh, paving the way for a strategic investment of up to $480,000.

Under the proposed transaction, AQAR will invest through a Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE), with the funding to be provided in tranches linked to Doushesh achieving agreed growth milestones.

The investment is intended to support the development and expansion of Doushesh’s classified advertising platform, which serves the Syrian market.

The agreement also seeks to support the development of digital infrastructure for the real estate and classified advertising sectors, as Syria’s entrepreneurial ecosystem begins attracting greater regional interest.

The MoU was signed by Ibrahim Al-Shehail, CEO of AQAR, and Alaa Al-Din Zarzour, CEO of Doushesh.

September 3rd 2026, 12:21 pm

Jordan’s Abwaab acquires Egyptian edtech Eduact

Wamda

Press release:

Jordan-based education technology company Abwaab has acquired Egyptian edtech startup Eduact for an undisclosed amount, as it expands its platform beyond student-focused digital learning to provide technology infrastructure for independent teachers and learning centres.

Founded in Egypt in 2020 by Adham Hamed and Ali Hisham, Eduact provides software-as-a-service tools for independent educators and small learning centres. Its platform allows users to manage video content, grading and payments while connecting workflows across physical and online learning.

The acquisition will bring Eduact’s technology and relationships with Egyptian educators into Abwaab’s broader platform. Abwaab plans to use its technology, content and regional distribution network to extend Eduact’s offering to more teachers and learning centres across Egypt and other markets.

Founded in Jordan in 2019 by Hamdi Tabbaa, Sabri Hakim and Hussein AlSarabi, Abwaab provides curriculum-aligned online learning, assessments and other education services. The company currently operates across six markets in the MENA region.

“We’ve always believed that transforming education in the Arab world isn’t about one company doing everything; it’s about finding the best teams solving real problems on the ground and building with them,” said Hamdi Tabbaa, co-founder and CEO of Abwaab. He added that Eduact had spent years building relationships with teachers and learning centres across Egypt.

The transaction is Abwaab’s second acquisition this year. Earlier in 2026, it acquired Egypt-based Apex Education, which specialises in international university admissions, extending Abwaab’s offering into higher education preparation and admissions advisory.

September 3rd 2026, 12:21 pm

BitOasis names Jonathan Rigg CEO to lead next phase of growth

Wamda

Press release:

BitOasis, a CoinDCX company and one of the Middle East and North Africa's pioneer and leading regulated digital asset platforms, today announced the appointment of Jonathan Rigg as Chief Executive Officer.

 Mr. Rigg succeeds Ola Doudin, who co-founded BitOasis in 2016 and has led the company over the past years to become the region's most established crypto platform.

The appointment marks the next stage in BitOasis's development as it deepens its presence across the MENA region. The platform has recorded approximately $8.5 billion in spot trading volume and serves a client base spanning retail investors, family offices and institutions across the UAE, Bahrain and the wider market. 

"Over the years, we've worked to build more than a company; we've helped kickstart and lay the foundations for the digital asset industry across the region, and with that BitOasis has become one of the most trusted crypto brands across the GCC. From navigating an emerging market, achieving important regulatory milestones to serving more than a million customers in the region, every achievement has been the result of exceptional commitment towards our mission from day one. I couldn't be more confident in handing the business over to Jonathan, whose experience and leadership make him the right person to lead BitOasis through its next phase of growth," said Ola Doudin, Co-Founder of BitOasis.

"I am delighted to welcome Jonathan to the BitOasis family. He joins us as Chief Executive Officer at an important moment for the business, and I am confident his experience will help take the platform into its next chapter. I am deeply grateful to Ola for building an exceptional brand and an equally exceptional team, one that has been instrumental in enabling access to crypto across the region," said Sumit Gupta, Co-Founder of CoinDCX. In 2024, CoinDCX, India's leading crypto exchange, acquired BitOasis.

Mr. Rigg is a senior financial services commercial leader with an extensive track record spanning global banking, digital assets and fintech platforms. He has direct P&L ownership experience scaling businesses from pre-revenue to profitability, including the monetisation of crypto infrastructure; OTC trading, stablecoin payments and Banking as a Service. A hands-on operator, he has launched regulated platforms, built high-performing commercial teams, and is well connected across the region's regulators, financial institutions and enterprise clients.

Mr. Rigg brings close to a decade of experience in global banking and markets, with previous roles at HSBC and Deutsche Bank, predominantly in prime brokerage and capital advisory. Most recently he spent three years at Fuze Finance as Vice President, Commercial, where he was part of the founding team and helped scale the business from inception. 

"It's an honour to join BitOasis at such an important point in its journey. Ola and the team have built an exceptional platform with a strong reputation across the region, and my role is to build on that foundation. Together, we will continue strengthening our products, expanding our capabilities, and delivering the high standards our customers, partners and regulators expect. Trust and safety will continue to remain a central lever in everything we do, ensuring customers can engage with confidence as the platform grows. BitOasis has played a defining role in shaping the digital asset ecosystem across the MENA region, and I'm excited to lead the company into its next chapter," said Jonathan Rigg, incoming Chief Executive Officer of BitOasis.

In May 2025, the company launched BitOasis Bahrain following the grant of a broker dealer license from the Central Bank of Bahrain, extending its regulated footprint beyond the UAE. Its OTC desk now serves institutional clients with the liquidity and execution certainty they require, and the company has secured regulatory approval for derivatives products that are moving toward market launch.

"I am thrilled to welcome Jonathan at such a pivotal time for BitOasis. Having built a strong foundation of trust and regulatory compliance across the region, including our operations here in Bahrain, we are in a prime position for our next phase of growth. I look forward to working closely with him to further strengthen our brand, expand our footprint, and cement BitOasis as the leading, most trusted crypto platform across the MENA region," said Ali Dashti, General Manager, BitOasis Bahrain.

These milestones, together with the continued integration with CoinDCX, position BitOasis at the center of the region's digital asset ecosystem.

September 3rd 2026, 12:21 pm

Enhance raises $18.2 million in equity-debt round

Wamda

Press release:

Enhance, the operating system for personal training (PT), announces an $18.2 million equity/debt fund raising.

Institutional investors include Global Ventures – the leading MENA venture capital firm (equity) – and Stride Ventures (venture debt).

The growth capital provided in the round will be used to accelerate Enhance’s expansion in the United States. As the world’s largest gym market, the US is Enhance’s centre of gravity and where its model generates the most value. 

Enhance’s enterprise software has been licensed in the US since January 2025 and is now present in 700+ clubs across major national chains such as Crunch Fitness – one of America’s largest gym chains – In-Shape Family Fitness; UFC Gym; and PureGym USA. A significant operational milestone, Enhance is among the first GCC-built software platforms to be exported and deployed at scale in the US market.

Across its markets, Enhance supports 15,000 personal trainers and over 500,000 booked PT sessions a month. Revenue has compounded at 65% CAGR since 2019.

Tarek Mounir, Founder and CEO of Enhance, said:

“We are delighted to add growth capital and to diversify our capital structure from a position of strength. We are becoming the global operating system for Personal Training, amid the popularity in the United States – the world’s largest gym market – of our GCC-built SaaS platform that redefines how PT services are delivered and managed. With more US expansion ahead and the prospect of other international markets being perfectly suited to our system, we look forward to the future with confidence.”

The market outlook is positive. PT is the most profitable revenue line in fitness but the least systematised. Enhance is the operating system for PT, helping large gym chains in the high-volume, low-price (HVLP) segment turn PT from an afterthought into predictable, profitable revenue streams. 

A typical HVLP gym with 10,000-12,000 members that converts just 3%-4% of its members into PT produces revenue comparable to the location's overall membership revenues. Enhance’s enterprise-level software makes that conversion manageable at scale. At mature HVLP sites using Enhance, PT revenues can reach $85,000 per club per month – a compelling long-term value case for gyms. 

Enhance’s three-to-five-year vision is to be the system of record and operating standard for the $42 billion global PT market – the platform gym operators default to the way hotel groups default to property management software or restaurants default to reservation systems. This category does not exist yet and Enhance is building it. Enhance is pursuing strategic partnerships in the US that reflect this logic – enterprise gym groups seeking operators they can trust to run PT end-to-end, beyond just software.

The GCC market environment is also positive, as a structural shift has occurred in how consumers approach health. Contemporary gym users are sophisticated and now seek guidance on strength, recovery, energy, and long-term health span – a significant vocabulary shift in under a decade. Consumer demand in some GCC markets is outpacing the supply of qualified personal trainers, showing the ceiling is still far above where the market is today.

In the GCC, the Company’s anchor partner is GymNation – for whom Enhance runs the entire PT operation, end-to-end, across all locations in the UAE, KSA and Bahrain. Outside the US, KSA is the Company’s highest growth market and where Enhance is seeing more first-time formal fitness participants than in any other geography it operates in. Enhance also operates in Qatar. 

Enhance benefits from significant barriers to entry. Every PT session Enhance has supported over the last eight years, which is a data point on what makes a personal trainer successful, why members stay at or leave a gym, and where a gym’s revenue leaks out. New market entrants would require almost a decade of operational history to rebuild this, which cannot be shortcut with capital.

Enhance is also an AI-native company managing an optimal overlapping of technology and trainers. AI accelerates the creation and automation of PT programmes, while the trainer remains in charge of the relationship. Technology handles the production layer, and the human handles the part the gym client is actually paying for.

Noor Sweid, Founder and Managing Partner at Global Ventures, commented:

"Global Ventures has backed Enhance across successive rounds, and our belief in the business has only deepened over that period. From the outset, Tarek and the team were building for global markets, and the company's establishment in the US, alongside its GCC operations, reflects the scale of that ambition. Enhance demonstrates that companies founded in this region can compete and win in the world's most developed markets."

Varun Agarwal, Partner at Stride Ventures, said:

"Enhance is proof of what this region can produce – a homegrown, category-defining and already the go-to partner for the likes of GymNation across the GCC markets. That same conviction is now underpinning the expansion into the US, the world's largest gym market, and we are excited to support the next leg of growth for Enhance."

September 3rd 2026, 12:21 pm

COFE Tech closes pre-IPO round at $178 million valuation

Wamda

Press release:

COFE Tech (formerly COFE APP), the leading operator of agentic AI enterprises and the provider of intelligent procurement and commerce infrastructure to more than 1,000 businesses across the Gulf, announced today at LEAP 2026 the close of a pre-IPO funding round valuing the company at $178 million. The round was co-led by Wa'ed Ventures, the domestic venturing arm of Aramco, Aditum Investment Management, the regional fund partner to global financial giants like BlackRock, Masarrah Investment Company and Alyasra Foods. The investment puts COFE Tech, dubbed as the “Salesforce of MENA”, on course for a targeted IPO on the Saudi Exchange by 2029, aligned with the ambitions of Saudi Vision 2030.

“Too many companies in our region still run procurement, sales and inventory on systems that do not talk to one another, and that gap costs them efficiency at every step,” said Ali Al-Ebrahim, founder and CEO of COFE Tech. “COFE Tech brings those operations into a single intelligent platform, where agents watch the business, anticipate what it needs and act on its behalf, before a shelf runs empty or a customer is kept waiting. The backing from Wa'ed Ventures, Aditum Investment Management, Masarrah Investment Company and Alyasra Foods reflects confidence in our read on where enterprise software in the Gulf is heading, and we intend to turn that into continued growth across the MENA region.”

Al-Ebrahim added: “Since COFE launched out of Kuwait in 2018, we have expanded quickly across the Gulf, including the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The business and innovation environments in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are what made that pace possible. COFE Tech today is a working example of what the innovation-enabling economic visions of the Gulf countries can produce when they line up, and of the AI-ecosystem this region gives ambitious Gulf companies to grow and scale regionally. We thank all our investors for their continued trust and confidence in our vision, and for their support for our team.”

“COFE Tech is built as one core with two engines, a foundation flexible enough for an enterprise to start with a single workflow and extend across its whole operation without re-platforming,” said Shahood Siddiqui, Chief Technology Officer of COFE Tech. “That architecture is proving itself in production: enterprises across the Gulf have transformed how they run growth, procurement and finance on it, with our agents working inside their day-to-day decisions. This round lets us take that foundation further.”

Anas Algahtani, Chief Executive Officer at Wa’ed Ventures, said: “COFE Tech has demonstrated an impressive ability to evolve from a consumer marketplace into an enterprise technology platform addressing critical procurement and commerce challenges. Its growing adoption across Gulf enterprises validates both the strength of its technology and the scale of the opportunity ahead. We see significant potential for COFE Tech to deepen its presence in Saudi Arabia and build an institutionally ready technology company with long-term regional relevance.”

“Aditum Venture Capital Fund’s participation in this round reflects its approach to identifying compelling investment opportunities globally and across regional markets in MENA, supported by Aditum Group’s presence in UAE and Saudi Arabia,” stated Manoj Mahadev, Head of Investments, Aditum Investment Management.

“COFE Tech represents the type of opportunity Aditum VC looks for, combining disciplined expansion across key regional markets with a growing enterprise business and an evolving governance framework that positions the business for its next stage of growth. This combination of regional growth potential and institutional capabilities is central to how Aditum evaluates VC investment opportunities,” stated Sonali Goila, Head of VC, Aditum Investment Management.

Dalal Al Mutlaq, Principle and Board member at Masarrah Investment Company, said: “Building enduring businesses requires patient capital and the ability to support companies as they move into more ambitious stages of development. COFE Tech has grown from its roots in Kuwait into a technology business serving more than 1,000 enterprises across the Gulf region, while continuing to broaden the role its platform plays for enterprise customers. Masarrah sees strong potential in the company’s next chapter and the value it can build as it continues to scale.”

Yousef Nasser Alfulaij, Head of Real Estate and Projects at Alyasra Group, said: “Our participation in this round reflects our strong conviction in the company’s growth potential and the opportunity for ambitious technology companies to build a strong foundation in the region and scale from here. Since its founding, COFE has demonstrated a clear ability to evolve and enter new markets, reinforcing our confidence in the management team’s ability to lead the company through its next phase of growth, strengthen COFE’s presence across the GCC, and expand beyond the region.”

The closing of COFE Tech’s funding round was announced during LEAP 2026 in Riyadh, with the company represented by Founder and CEO Ali Al-Ebrahim and Co-Founder Hamad Musaed Al-Sayer, alongside representatives of the participating investors.

The latest round of investment backs the progress COFE Tech has made in growing from a consumer marketplace to an operator of agentic AI enterprises, along two principal tracks. The first is Agentic Procurement, a unified enterprise procurement infrastructure solution. The second is Agentic Commerce, a unified enterprise technology infrastructure solution. Both run alongside the company’s direct-to-consumer marketplace, the business where the platform was first built and proven.

COFE Tech today serves more than 1,000 clients across 3,000 outlets in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, spanning coffee shops and restaurants, hotels, hospitals, education, aviation and corporates. Clients include Emirates, Etihad Airways, Kuwait Airways, Al-Futtaim Group, Kuwait Finance House, the Central Bank of Kuwait, stc, Aramco and Alibaba Cloud, among others.

September 3rd 2026, 12:21 pm

Sirdab raises $10 million Series A to expand across GCC

Wamda

Press release:

Sirdab, the company building the logistics infrastructure layer for Saudi Arabia and the GCC, has raised $10 million in Series A funding. The round was co-led by new investor Elm, the PIF-backed digital solutions company, and existing investor BECO Capital. Other backers include Y Combinator, COTU Ventures and D Global Ventures.

Founded in 2022, Sirdab enables companies to access, manage and scale their logistics through a single platform. Businesses secure verified warehousing and transportation, manage inventory and orders across locations, and monitor service levels in one place, while providers use Sirdab's software to standardise operations, share capacity and manage billing and compliance.

Sirdab has grown revenue 20x since graduating from Y Combinator's Winter 2023 batch while reaching profitability. Its clients include major government entities, publicly listed companies, and leading enterprises across multiple sectors, among more than 850 businesses using the platform. Its network spans 120+ warehouses and 60+ transportation providers, supporting dry, ambient, chilled, and frozen logistics.

Sirdab operates an asset-light network, complemented by strategically located company-operated facilities in key hubs. Its proprietary software enables this distributed infrastructure to function as one connected system, giving businesses flexibility, visibility and control as they scale, and giving providers new demand and standardised operations.

"Saudi Arabia is building one of the most dynamic logistics markets in the world, and businesses here have enormous room to grow," said Naif Alzahri, co-founder and CEO of Sirdab. "Sirdab gives them the infrastructure to grow on. We make quality capacity accessible in days, keep operations visible in real time and hold service to a consistent standard, so companies can expand into new cities and categories with confidence. This funding allows us to bring that to many more businesses across the Kingdom and the GCC."

The funding will support Sirdab's expansion across Saudi Arabia and the GCC, the growth of its network and further development of its platform, including AI that matches businesses to the right capacity and automates day-to-day coordination between shippers, warehouses and carriers.

September 3rd 2026, 12:21 pm

Dubai’s growing role in the global digital economy

Wamda

An article by Artem Shargin, a UAE-based entrepreneur and co-founder and chief operating officer of 0to8.

In the digital economy, geography works differently. But it has not stopped mattering.

Twenty years ago, an internet company seeking credibility, capital and global reach often looked first to Silicon Valley. Today, companies can be built from almost anywhere. What still varies significantly is how easy a place makes it to operate once a business begins crossing borders.

Dubai has become one of the places from which founders can run global companies day to day, coordinating teams, banking, legal structures and partnerships from the city while the business itself operates across multiple markets. A decade ago, founders seeking that kind of international reach were more likely to default to San Francisco, London or Singapore.

That does not make Dubai the right base for every company. Operating costs can be high, specialist talent is not always available locally, and businesses focused primarily on a single domestic market may find other locations more efficient.

For companies whose teams, customers and partners are distributed across regions, however, Dubai offers something different: a place from which those relationships can be coordinated.

A base for globally distributed businesses

My own experience reflects this shift.

Having built companies in digital fashion and music from the UAE, I have seen how differently a business can now be structured. Teams, creative talent, audiences, partners and customers do not have to be concentrated in the same country as the company’s headquarters.

My current business operates from Dubai while working across multiple markets. That experience has reinforced a broader point: a company can be headquartered in the UAE while its capabilities, audiences and commercial relationships are distributed around the world.

The broader ecosystem has moved in the same direction. Startup Genome's 2026 Global Startup Ecosystem Report values Dubai's startup ecosystem at $30 billion and ranks it No. 2 in MENA, making it the highest-ranked Gulf ecosystem.

But a growing ecosystem does not mean every company will find all the talent, customers or capital it needs within the city itself. Dubai's strength is increasingly its ability to connect companies to international markets rather than replace those markets.

Dubai as a coordination layer between markets

Founders choose a base for operational reasons. For internationally distributed businesses, Dubai's geography makes working across time zones unusually practical: teams can coordinate with Asia earlier in the day, Europe through the working day and the Americas later on.

Connectivity matters just as much.

Distributed teams and partners still need to meet in person. By the end of the first half of 2026, Dubai International Airport was connected to 217 destinations across 99 countries. For a business built around international relationships, having an accessible meeting point can matter as much as having a physical office.

This is where Dubai's role as a bridge becomes more interesting.

A company can build audiences in Latin America, work with partners in Europe and serve customers in the United States while coordinating the business from one location. Dubai becomes the layer connecting those relationships rather than the final destination for all of them.

That matters as global growth becomes less centred on a small number of Western hubs. Opportunities are emerging across Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. A company based in Dubai can operate between those markets rather than having to choose one geographic centre.

The city's cultural position also plays a role. Dubai brings together brands, creators and businesses across music, fashion, sport, entertainment and other parts of digital culture. For companies whose products travel through online communities, that proximity can create opportunities for partnerships, distribution and audience development.

Dubai does not eliminate the need to build teams, relationships and market knowledge elsewhere. That is precisely what makes its role different from a traditional hub. Rather than concentrating every function in one city, it can serve as a place from which distributed operations are coordinated.

The creator economy strengthens this model

The rise of the creator economy reinforces the same shift.

A UAE economic impact report from TikTok, developed with Redseer Strategy Consultants, estimated that activity by TikTok-enabled small and medium-sized businesses contributed AED 1.1 billion to the UAE economy and supported more than 7,000 jobs.

Those figures do not represent the entire creator economy, but they illustrate how digital distribution is increasingly translating into business formation and economic activity.

As creators become entrepreneurs, their needs also change. They require company structures, banking, licensing, tax support and access to professional services, while still depending on audiences and commercial relationships in markets around the world.

The UAE has begun building dedicated infrastructure around that transition. Creators HQ, launched in Dubai in 2025, grew out of the AED 150 million Content Creators Support Fund established under the directives of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. The initiative provides creators with support around company setup and registration, relocation and access to funding and investors.

The significance is less about any one initiative than what it represents: creator-led businesses are increasingly being treated as companies that need the same operating infrastructure as other digital ventures.

And, again, Dubai does not replace the markets where creators build their audiences. Its role is to provide an operating base from which those markets can be connected.

What this means for MENA founders

The bigger shift for founders across MENA is the separation of where a company is headquartered from where its capabilities and markets are located.

A founder might build with engineering talent in Egypt, develop commercial relationships in Saudi Arabia, raise capital through the UAE and sell into Europe, Asia or the United States without treating relocation to London or Silicon Valley as a prerequisite for global growth.

That creates a more distributed model of entrepreneurship.

Different ecosystems can contribute different capabilities. Dubai can function as a regional and international coordination hub. Saudi Arabia offers access to the region's largest economy and an expanding capital base. Egypt has a large pool of technical and creative talent. Other markets contribute their own expertise, customer bases and competitive advantages.

The opportunity is not for every city to become the next Silicon Valley. It is for these ecosystems to become more connected and complementary.

For founders, the question increasingly becomes not, “Where should I move my company?” but, “Where should each part of my company live?”

Headquarters, product development, talent, fundraising and market entry do not necessarily need to happen in the same place.

Dubai's potential advantage lies in its position at the centre of those connections.

The model also works in both directions. Dubai can serve as a base from which MENA companies reach international markets and as an entry point for global companies building relationships in the region. Its value lies on both sides of that bridge: regional businesses looking outward and international businesses looking inward.

For MENA, the implications extend beyond individual startups. If companies build globally while keeping their core operations connected to the region, more intellectual property, management expertise, capital and high-value jobs can remain within its ecosystems.

That would move MENA closer to being not only a market for global technology companies, but also a region from which globally competitive digital businesses are built.

The operating advantage

Dubai's strongest proposition is not self-sufficiency. It is coordination.

Its value lies in bringing infrastructure, capital, professional services, talent and global access into relatively close proximity. That does not remove the challenges of building an international company, but it can reduce some of the friction involved in coordinating one across multiple markets.

For MENA founders, that is the more consequential shift. Global ambition no longer has to mean geographic departure. A company can be built in the region, use different ecosystems strategically and operate internationally from the beginning.

The next generation of global companies may be less defined by the location of a single headquarters than by how effectively they connect capabilities across borders.

The cities that succeed in that environment will be those that make those connections easier.

Dubai is increasingly positioning itself as one of them.

August 31st 2026, 5:23 am

LEAP 2026 opens in Riyadh for its fifth edition

Wamda

Press release:

LEAP 2026 opens its doors in Riyadh tomorrow, marking the landmark fifth edition of an event that has grown into one of the world’s largest gatherings of the global technology community. Since launching in 2022, LEAP has grown rapidly in scale and international reach, drawing technology companies, investors, startups, speakers and innovators from around the world.

LEAP 5 will welcome global technology leaders, investors, founders and innovators for four days of major announcements, live demonstrations and conversations across AI, advanced computing, mobility, gaming, sport and emerging technology. The programme will span 16 stages and more than 20 content tracks, alongside new zones and experiences that reflect how LEAP has evolved over its first five editions.

The Main Stage will feature some of the most influential voices shaping the global technology landscape, including H.E. Eng. Abdullah Alswaha, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology; Dr. Lisa Su, Chair and CEO of AMD; Chuck Robbins, Chair and CEO of Cisco; and Tareq Amin, CEO of HUMAIN. They will be joined by futurist and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku; Javier Tebas, President of LaLiga; and senior leaders and voices from companies including NVIDIA, Google, Roblox, Uber, Meta, Lenovo, Nokia and Luma AI.

With Saudi Arabia’s Year of AI providing a wider backdrop to the fifth edition, AI will run throughout the programme, speakers and experiences at LEAP 2026, with a particular focus on how the technology is moving beyond discussion and into real-world application.

Beyond the headline discussions, LEAP 2026 will bring technology to life through some of the event’s most eye-catching experiences. At Tech Arena, Unitree robots will take to the floor for live dance demonstrations, alongside AGIBOT’s A2 Ultra humanoid robot and COGNIXION technology that enables users to communicate with and control devices using brain signals.

The Future Mobility Zone will bring robotaxis, autonomous delivery drones and flying taxis to the show floor, while GameX Creative will feature new game reveals, LEAP’s Roblox obstacle course and an ESL FACEIT esports racing simulator experience. SportsHub will put visitors in the driving seat through an interactive F1 experience powered by Saudi Motorsport Company and the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, including a racing simulator and an interactive journey through Jeddah Corniche Circuit. The new LEAP Studios will serve as a live hub for podcasts, interviews and creator-led content from across the event.

Global capital and startup growth will also be firmly in focus, with 1289 investors from 1016 firms representing a combined US$14.5 trillion in assets under management confirmed to attend. Rocket Fuel will see 100 finalists compete for a US$1 million equity-free prize pool following more than 3,000 applications, while Ecosystem Xchange will create further opportunities for founders to access new markets and build partnerships. LEAP Connect will provide a dedicated space for the international technology community to connect beyond the stages, bringing founders, investors and technology leaders together across the four days. 

Beyond the venue, LEAP Nights will extend LEAP 5 across Riyadh from 30 August to 4 September, with 60 events across more than 15 venues bringing networking, business, culture and entertainment into the city. The programme will span executive and investor gatherings, founder and VC experiences, cultural activations and community events, giving the global technology community further opportunities to connect while experiencing Riyadh beyond the show floor.

The programme will also connect LEAP with experiences beyond the event itself through a new strategic motorsport partnership between LEAP Nights and F1 Saudi Arabia Motorsport, giving LEAP attendees access to a 20 per cent early-bird ticket offer for the Formula 1 STC Saudi Arabian Grand Prix 2027 in Jeddah.

Annabelle Mander, Executive Vice-President and Co-Creator of LEAP, said: “Five years ago, together with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and SAFCSP, we set out to create a place in Riyadh where the global technology community could come together and turn ambition into meaningful action. What LEAP has become since then goes far beyond its scale. It is about the people who connect here, the partnerships that begin here and the opportunities that continue long after the doors close. Tomorrow, we open our fifth edition, bringing the world’s technology community together once again and reflecting the extraordinary progress of both LEAP and Saudi Arabia’s technology ecosystem.”

August 31st 2026, 5:23 am

GMNSM raises $2 million for GCC and European expansion

Wamda

Press release:

Dubai-based martial arts and holistic education network GMNSM has raised $2 million in funding from investment firm VEYRA Capital, whose portfolio includes companies such as Dwelly, ZINIT and DVC, as well as a private investor. The investment will support the company's first jiu-jitsu academy in Riyadh and the launch of its first European location in Monaco, supporting the company's ambition to broaden the Dubai-developed model of holistic child development to international markets.

Founded in 2022 by professional athlete-turned-entrepreneur Andrej Kuprejev, GMNSM has grown into a network of 11 academies across the UAE, Qatar and Cyprus, serving more than 700 children and adults through Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, judo, gymnastics and holistic development programmes. The company plans to increase its workforce from 40 to 60 employees by the end of the year to support its international expansion.

"We are seeing a massive cultural and educational shift towards more balanced childhoods  where physical activity, confidence and real-world social interaction complement digital learning. At GMNSM, our goal has always been to create an environment where children develop discipline, resilience and the life skills they need to thrive, alongside athletic ability. That's why we're bringing this model to more families across the GCC and Europe," said Andrej Kuprejev, Founder and CEO of GMNSM.

Unlike traditional martial arts academies, GMNSM positions itself at the intersection of sports, supplementary education and child development. Its signature programme combines one hour of physical training with 30 minutes dedicated to soft skills such as goal setting, emotional resilience, reflection and problem-solving.

GMNSM accepts children from age two through structured development programmes and also offers adult martial arts classes. Many parents join after enrolling their children, and this family-orientated approach has helped create a community where sport becomes a shared experience across generations. "We chose GMNSM because we wanted our child to develop skills that go beyond sport – confidence, discipline and resilience. The biggest difference we have seen is that training has become a source of personal growth, not just physical activity. GMNSM has created a community where children feel supported, challenged and motivated to improve," says H.H.  Sheikh Mohammed bin Maktoum Al Maktoum, a relative of a GMNSM students.

Using AI to maintain quality at scale

To ensure consistent coaching standards across every academy, GMNSM has invested in and developed its own lesson audit platform, Allim AI, which analyses coaching performance, student engagement, and retention metrics aimed at standardising teaching quality and providing coaches with actionable feedback. The platform is designed to support rapid scaling without compromising the consistency of the student experience across multiple markets.

Scaling a Dubai-born education model

The company sees Saudi Arabia as its next major growth market, with its first Riyadh academy expected to serve as a foundation for broader expansion across the Kingdom. In 2025, Saudi Arabia reported that 59.1% of adults met the recommended threshold of 150 minutes of weekly physical activity, exceeding the 2025 target of 55%, while physical activity among children aged 5-17 reached 19%, achieving the target originally set for 2030.

In parallel, Monaco will become GMNSM's next European location, chosen for its concentration of international families and its position as a gateway to broader European growth. Following Monaco, further expansions are set for the UK, Switzerland, and Spain.

“What convinced us about GMNSM was the combination of a strong founder, clear customer value and a model that can travel across markets without losing the quality of the underlying experience. At VEYRA Capital, we also pay close attention to how businesses are built – the quality of execution, the discipline behind growth and the ability to create lasting value. Andrej and his team have demonstrated that, and we believe this round can help them turn a proven concept into a much larger international platform," said Konstantin Katsev, Venture Partner at VEYRA Capital. The investment reflects growing investor interest in businesses that combine education, technology and recurring membership models, particularly as Gulf families increase spending on children's development and extracurricular activities.

August 27th 2026, 11:18 am

Oro raises $3 million to scale AI-powered financial execution platform

Wamda

Press release:

Oro, an innovative financial AI platform translating complex user intent into multi-step execution, today announced the successful closing of a $3 million strategic funding round. The round was co-led by MH Ventures and Mapleblock Capital, with participation from M2M Capital, Archer Capital, and X21 Digital, alongside follow-on strategic backing from Disrupt.com and ZIGLabs. This latest injection brings Oro’s cumulative funding to $4 million, providing ample runway to execute its long-term technical and global expansion objectives.

The new capital arrives during a pivotal industry shift from static conversational AI toward user-authorised, intent-based execution. Rather than manually navigating fragmented decentralised finance (DeFi) interfaces, Oro allows users to state their financial goals in plain text, converting natural-language prompts into multi-step transaction routes. Every execution remains 100% non-custodial and user-signed, bridging the gap between sophisticated financial infrastructure and mass-market accessibility.

Oro plans to deploy the $3 million across four primary operational pillars. A significant portion will advance core AI and agentic research and development, specifically expanding its proprietary Shield Engine and natural language execution stack. The remaining capital will scale global marketing and user acquisition campaigns, build proactive regulatory and compliance frameworks around policy-guarded autonomous custody, and expand engineering, AI research, and business development teams to accelerate enterprise B2B integrations.

The funding follows remarkable traction for the platform, which has already onboarded over 350,000 unique active users across more than 80 supported languages. Oro’s recent educational campaign backed by Amazon Web Services (AWS) saw over 250,000 verified user completions, while a live initiative with Ondo Finance generated over 50,000 verified completions within its first 24 hours. The platform also boasts live mainnet integrations with leading protocols across the Web3 ecosystem, including Morpho, Kamino, Lido, Aave, Uniswap, and Raydium.

Over the next 6 to 12 months, Oro will leverage this capital to achieve its primary target of reaching 10 million active users. Key milestones toward this goal include rolling out native iOS and Android mobile applications, expanding integration offerings, and establishing Oro as the primary B2B and B2C intent routing layer for third-party protocols. While its core board structure remains stable, the company is also in the process of finalising appointments for new advisory board members, including prominent AI and DeFi veterans.

“Over the past 18 months, the Web3 landscape went through a market filter where projects without genuine utility quietly disappeared, but Oro thrived by proving that combining financial infrastructure with natural-language AI creates a product that mass-market users actually want,” said Varun Choudhary, Co-founder and CEO of Oro. “We are witnessing a monumental shift toward intent-based execution. This funding round proves that real, sustainable product-market fit backed by hundreds of thousands of active users will always attract top-tier institutional capital, giving us the exact runway needed to consolidate our first-mover advantage globally.”

“Oro is tackling one of the most persistent bottlenecks in modern finance: complexity,” added Keira Nesdale, Portfolio Manager at co-lead investor MH Ventures. “Their ability to abstract away backend friction while maintaining rigorous, policy-guarded non-custodial security makes them uniquely positioned to lead the agentic finance transition. We are thrilled to co-lead this round and support their vision for mass consumer adoption.”

“The team at Oro has demonstrated exceptional execution and organic user growth through challenging market cycles,” said Vijay Garg, Managing Partner at co-lead investor Mapleblock Capital. “By establishing a seamless bridge between natural-language user intent and protocol execution, Oro is setting the standard for how everyday users and enterprises will interact with digital assets moving forward.”

August 27th 2026, 11:18 am

Swvl secures $13 million investment led by Sawiris-backed Coefficient

Wamda

Press release:

Swvl Holdings Corp (Nasdaq: SWVL) (“Swvl” or the “Company”), a leading provider of technology-driven mobility solutions for enterprises and governments, today announced that it has entered into a definitive securities purchase agreement for a $13 million private placement (the “PIPE”) led by Coefficient LP (“Coefficient”), a U.S. investment firm headquartered in Houston, Texas, which is backed by the Sawiris family of Cairo, Egypt. Coefficient has agreed to invest $10 million in the PIPE offering. Upon closing, Coefficient will become Swvl’s largest institutional shareholder. The round also includes a $3 million investment from an existing shareholder of Swvl that is deepening its position. In connection with the investment, Abdalla Ali, Founder and Managing Partner of Coefficient, will join Swvl's Board of Directors.

Under the terms of the agreement, Swvl will issue 8,990,317 Class A shares at a purchase price of $1.446 per share. The transaction is expected to close on August 27, 2026, subject to customary closing conditions.

The investment comes on the back of accelerating performance: in the first quarter of 2026, Swvl grew revenue compared to the first quarter of 2025 to 68% year-over-year to $8.2 million, with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) revenue up 111%, recurring revenue at 88% of total, net dollar retention of 114%, dollar-pegged revenue rising to 44% of total, and operating expenses falling to 23% of revenue as the Company approaches operating breakeven.

Swvl intends to use the net proceeds from the offering to accelerate Swvl’s expansion in the United States; to kickstart its lending offering for the transport operators and partners in its network, and to strengthen the balance sheet to support the Company’s growing pipeline of multi-year enterprise and government contracts.

“We view this investment as powering Swvl’s next chapter, cutting the ribbon on the U.S. market as we have just started our U.S. operations,” said Mostafa Kandil, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Swvl. “We believe that our results demonstrate that Swvl’s enterprise-first model can scale profitably, with revenue growing 68% in the first quarter of 2026 while operating expenses remained at just 23% of revenue. With this investment, we have partners with deep roots in the United States and across our existing markets, and with Abdalla joining our board, we believe that we have the capital, the alignment and the reach to bring Swvl’s platform to its largest market yet.”

“Our family has always backed builders — founders creating businesses that compound for decades aligns with our investment thesis,” said Onsi Sawiris. “Mostafa and his team have built a disciplined technology operator serving enterprises and governments across seven countries, and the business model and anticipated expansion provide a promising foundation for the company's future. We are proud to stand behind a founder building a global company, and we are investing for the long term.”

“AI is transforming how the world’s systems move information. But mass transportation, the system that moves people, has lagged behind in most cities around the world. Mobilising humanity — to work, to school, to healthcare, to opportunity — remains one of the last major operations still run manually,” said Abdalla Ali, Founder and Managing Partner of Coefficient. “Swvl turns moving people into intelligent, managed infrastructure. It does this not by adding fleets or concrete but with AI and orchestration that make existing capacity smarter, built on technology, operational expertise, and execution discipline proven with enterprises and governments across continents. And behind the platform is Mostafa, a founder whose journey speaks for itself. We are proud to support Swvl's next phase of growth, and I look forward to working alongside the board as the company builds its American business and widens the reach of its mission: mobilising people, intelligently.”

The securities described above are being offered in a private placement under Section 4(a)(2) of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), and/or Regulation D promulgated thereunder and have not been registered under the Securities Act, or applicable state securities laws. Accordingly, the securities may not be offered or sold in the United States except pursuant to an effective registration statement or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act and such applicable state securities laws. Pursuant to a registration rights agreement with Coefficient, the Company has agreed to file a resale registration statement covering the securities described above.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or other jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or other jurisdiction.

August 26th 2026, 5:18 am

UAE’s Stellaria secures $6.8 million to scale geospatial AI platform

Wamda

Press release:

UAE-based AI and geospatial intelligence  company Stellaria has closed an AED 25 million Seed Round, backed by a group of angel investors. The round values the company at AED 420 million and will support its next phase of growth, including scaling its AI operating system for geospatial intelligence, expanding its technical capabilities and team, and accelerating the deployment of its solutions across the UAE and international markets.

Stellaria is building an AI operating system for geospatial intelligence, designed to transform satellite imagery and other geospatial data into actionable intelligence through a unified AI-powered platform. The technology brings together geospatial data, advanced AI models and analytical workflows to enable users to detect, analyse and understand activity across the physical world. Its capabilities include AI-powered satellite imagery analytics, super-resolution, automated target recognition, maritime and port intelligence, satellite-derived bathymetry, environmental monitoring and its proprietary Stella  platform.

Dr. Ali AlHammadi, Founder and CEO of Stellaria, said: “This funding marks an important milestone in Stellaria’s journey and reflects the confidence our investors have placed in our technology and the team behind it. We have grown from a UAE startup into a company building an AI operating system for geospatial intelligence, bringing together satellite data, AI and advanced analytics within a unified platform. This next phase will allow us to invest further in our technology, strengthen our team and build scalable products that can compete internationally. Our ambition is to build globally relevant space and AI technology from the UAE and contribute to the country’s growing position as a hub for advanced innovation.”

Stellaria’s (formerly Farmin) growth also reflects the wider development of the UAE’s innovation ecosystem and the role that sustained ecosystem support can play in helping high-potential businesses build capabilities and scale. It is also an alumnus of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Innovation Fund’s Innovation Accelerator Program, where it benefited from tailored mentorship, strategic guidance and ecosystem connections designed to support innovative businesses as they develop and scale. The company has since continued to broaden its capabilities across space, AI and geospatial intelligence, with applications spanning government, defence, maritime and ports, infrastructure and environmental monitoring.

The latest funding round will support Stellaria’s growth trajectory, with a focus on strengthening UAE-developed technology, attracting specialised talent and scaling its solutions into new markets.

August 25th 2026, 3:01 pm

Raff raises $1.7 million to bridge online brands with physical retail

Wamda

Press release:

Raff, a Saudi-based technology platform simplifying distribution and inventory management by connecting consumer brands directly with retailers, today announced the closing of its $1.7 million pre-seed funding round, led by Vision Ventures, with participation from 500 Global, Palm VC, Oqal Group, Salman Butt (Co-founder of Salla), among others.

The funding will support Raff's regional expansion across the GCC while accelerating product development and AI capabilities as the company continues to simplify how consumer brands expand into physical retail.

Digital platforms and marketplaces have made it easier for consumer brands across the GCC to launch and grow online. However, expanding into offline retail remains a fragmented, time-consuming, and expensive process, requiring separate onboarding, logistics, and commercial relationships with each retailer. The opportunity is massive, with the GCC retail market valued at more than $300 billion a year.

Raff addresses this challenge through an end-to-end platform that digitises distribution, commercial operations, inventory management, order fulfilment, and payments, making it easier for brands to expand their presence across physical retail channels. For retailers, the platform automates key workflows and simplifies the management of a growing vendor network, while integrating with leading point-of-sale and accounting software in the region, allowing them to spend more time growing their businesses.

The startup was founded in 2024 by Ali Al Qudah and Abdul Kareem Munla, bringing together experience across e-commerce, technology, finance, and business operations. Al Qudah previously built and scaled two e-commerce brands before joining Saudi e-commerce company Salla as an early employee and later serving as Head of Growth at legal-tech startup Qanoniah. Munla brings more than 20 years of experience in financial management and business operations, spanning financial transformation, governance, compliance, and operational efficiency across multiple sectors.

Ali Al Qudah, Co-Founder and CEO of Raff, said: "We built Raff after experiencing firsthand how difficult it was for growing brands to move beyond online sales. While the barriers to launching an e-commerce business have never been lower, reaching customers through physical retail still requires brands to navigate multiple operational and commercial hurdles. Our mission is to simplify that journey and give brands a faster and more efficient way to reach offline customers. This investment enables us to accelerate that vision, expand across the GCC, and continue building the infrastructure powering the next generation of retail."

Kais Al-Essa, Founding Partner and CEO of Vision Ventures, added: "We are excited to partner with Ali and the Raff team as they represent the caliber of high-execution talent that we look for. We previously supported the shift from offline to online through our early investment in Salla. Today, we see an equally significant opportunity as brands look to expand from online into physical retail. Raff is solving a high-friction challenge at the intersection of retail technology and logistics, creating a new efficiency layer for commerce across the region. We are proud to lead this round and support the team's ambitious vision."

Since launching less than 18 months ago, Raff has enabled more than 900 brands across nine countries, spanning the GCC and the UK, to grow their presence through physical retail channels.

August 25th 2026, 3:01 pm

Qatar’s DineNORDER expands into Egypt

Wamda

Press release:

Qatar-based restaurant technology startup DineNORDER has expanded into Egypt, bringing its suite of digital restaurant management tools to the market as part of a broader regional growth strategy.

Founded in 2023, DineNORDER develops technology designed to help restaurants manage their operations through an integrated digital platform. Its offering includes online ordering, point-of-sale technology, reservation systems, marketing tools, customer insights and inventory management.

The platform brings together tools for managing orders, payments, customer interactions and other day-to-day restaurant operations, targeting businesses seeking to digitise their workflows and customer experience.

DineNORDER said its entry into Egypt forms part of its regional expansion strategy. As it establishes its presence in the country, the company plans to engage with local restaurant businesses, technology partners and talent.

“Egypt represents an exciting market for us, and we look forward to bringing our smart digital solutions to restaurants,” said Anja Miscevic, product manager at DineNORDER.

DineNORDER is incubated at Qatar Science & Technology Park, and positions its technology as an integrated operating toolkit for restaurants, spanning ordering and reservations through to marketing and inventory management.

August 24th 2026, 6:01 pm

Aramco Ventures backs Twin1 AI in $20 million seed round

Wamda

Press release:

US-based enterprise AI startup Twin1 AI has raised $20 million in a Seed round co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners, Tribeca Venture Partners and Saudi-based Aramco Ventures as the company emerges from stealth to scale its AI-powered digital twin platform.

The round also saw participation from EJF Ventures, Tin Alley Ventures, AGI House Ventures, Neo, F-Prime, Btech Consortium, Antiportfolio Ventures, Lakestar, Notion Capital, Insiders and other investors.

Founded in 2025 by Dr Lewis Z. Liu, Tom Cahn, Huiting Liu and Dr Jonathan Budd, Twin1 AI is developing what it describes as a coordination and trust layer for enterprise AI. Its platform creates an AI-powered digital twin for individual professionals, drawing on their work context to preserve and make their expertise accessible across an organisation.

The digital twins can draw on approved workplace information, including emails, meetings, documents and other systems. The platform integrates with tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Gmail, Google Drive and SharePoint.

Twin1 AI also incorporates privacy and governance controls that determine what information each digital twin can access and share. Its Twin Network connects individual twins to help identify relevant colleagues, retrieve permission-aware knowledge and coordinate work across an organisation.

The company has begun deploying its technology across organisations in sectors including legal services, financial services and energy.

Twin1 AI will use the new capital to expand its teams in San Mateo, California, and London, invest in its go-to-market operations and continue developing its core technology. 

August 24th 2026, 6:01 pm

Fasset hits $1 billion valuation after $68 million Series C

Wamda

Press release:

Fasset, the AI-powered stablecoin neobanking platform, today announced it has raised $68 million in Series C funding at a $1 billion valuation. The financing was led by SBI Group and follows Fasset’s $51 million Series B earlier this year, which brought Speedinvest onto the cap table alongside a group of strategic investors.

The new capital will support the expansion of Own Network, Fasset’s regulated financial network that connects banks, telcos, payment and liquidity providers to enable settlement across international markets. Fasset will also increase investment in agentic AI-enabled systems supporting corridor banking, stablecoin settlement and tokenised asset infrastructure.

After raising Series B in May, Fasset has now raised a total of $119 million in 2026. The financing marks Fasset’s entry into the global fintech unicorn category.

"Fasset's vision of a world in which money moves across borders as easily as information does points in the same direction as the on-chain economic zone that the SBI Group seeks to realise through digital finance. Fasset has already built a strong business foundation and a robust regulatory framework in a number of emerging markets with significant long-term growth potential. It was therefore in the conviction that Fasset can serve as an important financial bridge connecting Japan with high-growth markets around the world that we decided to lead this round. Within the SBI Group's "SBI APAC Digital Economic Zone" concept as well, an international remittance and settlement infrastructure built on stablecoins is a core component. Together with Fasset, we will advance the development of the next generation of on-chain financial systems, extending from the Asia-Pacific region to the Middle East and Africa." said Yoshitaka Kitao, Representative Director, Chairman, President & CEO, SBI Holdings, Inc.

The investment expands Fasset’s relationship with SBI Group, one of Japan’s leading comprehensive financial groups, spanning banking, securities, asset management, and private equity, with investments in companies including Ripple, Circle, and Morpho and in group companies including B2C2.

“The next phase is about any-to-any banking. Any person to any person. Any asset to any asset. Any rail to any rail, anywhere. We built Fasset to address a simple problem: access to financial opportunity still depends too heavily on where someone lives and the financial system available to them,” said Mohammad Raafi Hossain, Co-Founder and CEO of Fasset. “The banking system is broken. It’s not enough to build another financial front on current rails. We are investing deeper into the stack, from licences in emerging markets to enabling agentic payments, to rebuild the way we do banking from the ground up.”

“Having SBI Group lead this round speeds up our ability to serve the world by having access to the wider SBI financial ecosystem and their partners, including our previously announced partnership with SBI Remit, enabling us to leverage an extensive network that supports bank account remittances to approximately 200 countries.”

“Fasset is building the regulated infrastructure that helps people and businesses in growth markets access stablecoins, global assets and cross-border rails. That access is still too often shaped by geography. Raafi, Daniel and the team are changing that, and we are proud to have continued backing Fasset as it scales globally,” said Stefan Klestil, General Partner at Speedinvest.

Building a Financial System Around Ownership

Fasset provides financial access that allows customers to receive, hold, move, spend and invest across currencies, markets and asset classes.

Underpinning those products is Own Network, Fasset’s financial infrastructure connecting local banking systems, payment providers, financial institutions, telcos, liquidity providers, custody partners and settlement networks across more than 100 banking corridors.

Stablecoins are used within parts of the network as settlement infrastructure, allowing value to move between markets more efficiently where appropriate. Customers interact with Fasset through financial products and accounts rather than needing to manage the underlying settlement infrastructure themselves.

The company uses AI to improve how transactions are routed across payment rails, currencies, liquidity providers, and settlement methods, based on factors including cost, speed, and availability.

Fasset is built around a simple conviction: where someone is born should not determine the quality of money they can hold, the markets they can access or the assets they can own. The company is not building another interface on top of the existing financial system. It is building the infrastructure intended to replace it.

Scaling Global Infrastructure: $40B Annualized Volume

Fasset now processes more than $40 billion in annualised transaction volume, serving more than 3 million wallets across 125 countries and over 1,000 enterprises globally.

Its consumer, business and institutional products are supported by a regulatory footprint across the GCC, Asia, Europe and other international markets.

The Series C will support Fasset’s continued development as a global, AI-powered stablecoin neobanking platform, combining regulated local infrastructure, modern settlement technology and access to global assets through a single financial account.

August 24th 2026, 6:01 pm

What I’ll be watching at LEAP 2026 — beyond billions and big announcements

Wamda

An article by Abdullah Al Jaafari, CEO and Founder of Resquad AI

At the end of this month, Riyadh will host the fifth edition of LEAP. It is easy to forget how unlikely the first one felt back in 2022. A brand-new technology conference drew more than 100,000 registered attendees from over 80 countries to Saudi Arabia.

Nobody is asking whether LEAP can attract an audience now. Last year’s edition drew more than 200,000 attendees and opened with $14.9 billion in AI investment announcements on its first day. Those announcements pushed the total value of technology-related infrastructure investment announced in Saudi Arabia since LEAP debuted past $42.4 billion. The event has settled one argument: Saudi Arabia, and increasingly the wider region, can attract capital, companies, and attention on an enormous scale.

That is exactly why I will be watching this year’s edition through a different lens. The interesting question in Riyadh is no longer how much is being invested. It is what that investment actually produces: technology that gets deployed, products genuinely built in the region and, above all, people capable of building and sustaining them.

Every announcement from the main stage can be held against that filter. Four areas will tell us the most: infrastructure, agentic AI, Arabic-first products and talent.

The first is infrastructure, although I suspect the headline numbers will tell us less than they used to. I expect more data centres, more cloud capacity, more chip deals and another chapter in the HUMAIN story – fitting in a year Saudi Arabia has formally designated its Year of Artificial Intelligence. HUMAIN itself was launched in 2025 to operate across the AI stack, from data centres and cloud infrastructure to models and applications.

The progress is real. In only a few years, the Gulf has moved from being primarily a buyer of global technology to building a serious part of the infrastructure behind it.

But buying compute is something the Gulf has already proved it can do. The more revealing question is what happens after the infrastructure switches on.

Who is building products on the capacity announced a year ago? Who deploys them inside companies and government agencies? Who is still there six months later, addressing the less glamorous problems that never appear in a press release?

Gigawatts are an input. This year, I want to hear about outputs.

The second is agentic AI, because agents are where deployment either happens or it does not. At recent events, agents mostly lived in demonstrations and keynote videos. The conversations I am hearing now are different. Companies are asking about integration schedules, costs and ownership. Government organisations are asking where agents can run inside real services rather than controlled experiments.

The UAE has gone furthest. Since January, its National Artificial Intelligence System has served as an advisory member of the Cabinet, the Ministerial Development Council and the boards of federal entities and government companies. In June, the UAE went further, establishing an Artificial Intelligence and Data Authority whose mandate explicitly includes a unified digital government system using agentic AI.

So at DeepFest, which runs alongside LEAP, I will be listening for fewer presentations about what agents may eventually do and more examples of where they already run, what they cost and whether they work.

Deployments are evidence. Demos are not.

The third is Arabic-first technology, because it separates products built for this region from products merely sold to it.

For a long time, Arabic support appeared somewhere near the end of a product presentation. It was treated as a localisation task: build the product in English, translate the interface and declare the region covered. The results were often technically functional but culturally weak.

That is becoming harder to defend. The models have improved, governments are asking for technology designed around local needs, and a language used daily by more than 400 million people cannot seriously be treated as a niche.

If this is the year when products designed in Arabic, for Arabic-speaking users, reach the main stages rather than a corner of the exhibition hall, it will signal something larger than better language support. It will mean the region is starting to produce more of its own technology, not simply procure it.

It will also change who can take part in building here.

Which brings me to the fourth and hardest area, and the one I care about most: talent.

Talent will be discussed constantly at LEAP. It always is, and the initiatives behind the discussion are serious. Saudi Arabia’s national data and AI strategy aims to train and qualify more than 20,000 data and AI specialists by 2030. More recent figures from SDAIA put the number of specialists and experts reached through its training programmes at 14,495.

Its SAMAI initiative passed one million citizens trained in AI last year, and the second phase has expanded into 11 government ministries, with an emphasis on practical adoption in the workplace. The UAE, meanwhile, launched its National Programme for Coders with a scheme to grant golden visas to 100,000 coders, including people living outside the country.

Yet the global competition for those skills remains sobering. IDC estimated that by 2026 more than 90 per cent of organisations worldwide would feel the effects of the IT skills crisis, with $5.5 trillion in losses caused by product delays, impaired competitiveness and lost business. AI skills were identified as the most in-demand among enterprises surveyed.

In practice, the situation means the Gulf is competing for the same scarce technical talent as the United States, Europe, India and every company that has decided it needs an AI team.

Attracting people to the region is necessary, particularly now. But it cannot be the only plan. If sovereign AI depends indefinitely on imported expertise, then an important part of that sovereignty remains outside the country.

The frustrating part is that no keynote can fix this issue. A government can fund a data centre or license a model. But you cannot sign an MoU that brings an experienced engineer into existence. Ten years of production experience cannot be procured in time for the next conference.

Something has changed over the past 18 months, though, and I think it deserves much more attention than it is getting.

The entry point into software has moved

A founder in Jeddah who understands logistics, or a doctor in Dubai who knows exactly where clinics waste time, can now describe an idea in ordinary language and have a working version of it by the end of the day.

Andrej Karpathy coined the unfortunate phrase “vibe coding” in early 2025 for one version of this way of building. I do not particularly like the phrase, but the change behind it is real.

Within weeks, Y Combinator partners said that for roughly a quarter of the companies in its Winter 2025 batch, about 95 per cent of the code was AI-generated. Importantly, YC also stressed that these founders were highly technical; AI was changing how they built, not eliminating the need to understand what they were building.

At the other end of the spectrum, Replit chief executive Amjad Masad said 75 per cent of the platform’s customers never write a single line of code. Software creation is increasingly expanding beyond the people who learned to build it in the traditional way.

Of course, generated code does not remove the need for engineers. Quite often, it proves why they are needed.

The first version works. Then the product meets real users, real data and real security requirements, and architecture, reliability and maintenance stop being abstract words. Even as Y Combinator highlighted the amount of AI-generated code in its latest companies, its partners were careful to make the same point: founders still need enough technical depth to understand the code and find the bugs.

I have watched people go through this process. They build something small, discover its limits and start asking much better questions. They learn because they finally have a real project in front of them, not because somebody gave them another introductory course.

Some bring senior engineers into the project. Some become capable technical leaders themselves. In both cases, the project becomes the beginning of their technical education.

This is why I think the shift belongs at the centre of the region’s talent conversation rather than at its margins.

The Gulf does not need every future founder to spend 10 years becoming a software engineer before testing an idea. It needs far more people with local knowledge to begin building and enough experienced engineers around them to turn the good ideas into dependable products.

Banks running innovation programmes, universities designing capstone projects, ministries procuring software and large companies retraining their staff can all treat first-time builders as the beginning of a talent pipeline rather than a curiosity.

The Gulf has spent the past few years securing access to compute. The next few will be judged on whether that access produces more builders, more products and more companies created here.

The number I would like to hear

LEAP 2026 will be impressive; that much is safe to say. The halls will be full, the schedule will be dense, and the announcements will once again be counted in billions.

But there is another number I would like to hear from the opening stage: How many people in this region built and released software for the first time during the past year?

Not how many attended an AI course or opened a coding assistant, but how many made something another person could actually use.

It is the one number that connects everything above.

It tells you whether the data centres have tenants, whether the agents have owners and whether Arabic-first products have makers.

People will once again describe chips as the new oil. Perhaps they are. But access to chips will not decide which countries build the strongest technology economies. The more important question is what people create with them.

When LEAP begins measuring new builders alongside deals and infrastructure, we will know that the region’s sovereign AI plans are becoming more than an investment story.

See you in Riyadh.

August 24th 2026, 6:01 pm

Exits MENA acquires Avanz Capital Egypt in multi-seven-figure deal

Wamda

Press release:

Exits MENA, the region’s first investment platform and advisory firm focusing on startups and SMEs, today announced the signing of a multi-seven-figure transaction in partnership with ACE’s existing local management to acquire Avanz Capital Egypt (ACE), a private equity and asset management firm.

With initial approval from Egypt’s Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA), the transaction represents an important milestone in Exits MENA’s strategy to build an integrated financial group serving investors, startups, SMEs, and financial institutions across Egypt and the wider MENA region.

Under the agreement, ACE’s existing management team, led by CEO and Managing Director Haytham Wagih, will remain in place and retain responsibility for the firm’s operations and investment activities.

The structure is designed to provide existing investors and clients of ACE with continuity, alignment, and confidence in line with international private equity standards, while creating a stronger platform for developing scalable and impactful private capital opportunities.

Avanz Capital Egypt has established a recognised position within Egypt’s private equity ecosystem, with a mandate focused on supporting SMEs and strengthening the country’s private equity and venture capital landscape. Its experience will complement Exits MENA’s advisory capabilities and regional network, creating a more connected platform that combines access to attractive investment opportunities and competitive risk-adjusted returns for investors with long-term value creation across portfolio companies.

“We are now better aligned through ownership participation. Our team remains in place and will continue to expand. Our investment process remains unchanged,” said Haytham Wagih, Managing Director and CEO of Avanz Capital Egypt. “What changes is our capacity to grow and retain key talent. We are delighted to welcome Dr. Nader Elsayed as a shareholder and Executive Director. In contrast, Masa Arafa will continue her leading role as Investment Director with ownership alignment. With Exits MENA, we now have a broader regional platform behind us while developing the way we manage the firm and its portfolio.”

Founded in 2022 by Mohamed Abuelnaga Nagaty, Ayman El Tanbouly, and Ahella El Saban, Exits MENA has expanded its footprint into more than seven global markets. The company has built a strong track record across investment transactions and strategic advisory engagements, supported by a growing network of regional and international partners, having established more than 75 global partnerships, launched three ongoing investment-readiness programmes, and supported more than 2,000 businesses across the region.

“This acquisition marks a defining step in Exits MENA’s journey to build an integrated financial group serving the region. Since 2022, we have worked with businesses across different stages of growth and consistently seen the need for a more connected pathway between investment readiness, advisory services, and access to capital. By bringing private equity and asset management capabilities into our platform, we are completing the ecosystem we set out to build for founders, SMEs, investors, and institutional partners. We believe this model will deliver stronger outcomes for limited partners and portfolio companies while contributing to the long-term development of Egypt’s private capital market,” said the Exits MENA founding team.

The acquisition reinforces Exits MENA’s broader strategy to strengthen the region’s private capital ecosystem by providing investors with access to viable, scalable investment opportunities across Egypt and the MENA region while supporting the development of deeper, more efficient private capital and exit markets.

The expanded platform brings together advisory, private equity, and asset management capabilities under one group, while maintaining strict separation between advisory mandates and investment decision-making to ensure independence, governance, and alignment with investors’ interests.

The next milestone is the rebranding of ACE to Exits Manara as the private capital and asset management subsidiary of Exits MENA. Exits Manara will continue to focus on the management and growth of Manara 1, the existing fund of funds dedicated to SMEs, and will expand AUMs through the establishment of Manara 2 for Export Investments, a new investment vehicle focusing on developing mid-sized exporting businesses to expand into international markets.

The acquisition comes amid a persistent financing challenge facing SMEs and high-growth businesses across MENA. According to the World Bank, SMEs in the region receive approximately 8% of total bank credit, compared with 22% in high-income economies. At the same time, CGAP estimates that the Arab world’s overall SME finance gap stands at approximately $123 billion.

August 20th 2026, 7:29 pm

Private equity can help write MENA’s next growth chapter

Wamda

Among the most pressing challenges facing policymakers and business leaders across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is creating high-quality jobs for the region’s young and growing population. By 2050, nearly 300 million young people in MENA are expected to be seeking employment, according to the World Bank. Meeting a challenge of this scale will require more than creating jobs at the margins. It will require stronger private-sector growth that raises productivity, supports economic diversification and enables companies to scale across competitive industries.

Repeated geopolitical shocks have exposed and exacerbated pre-existing vulnerabilities, not only in fragile economies but also across the historically more stable Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Addressing the region’s economic challenges will require more than macroeconomic or public-sector reforms. Its longer-term development — including reconstruction and economic recovery in conflict-affected countries — will also depend on unlocking the potential of businesses that can become engines of job creation and catalysts for regional and global competitiveness.

The region’s challenge is not simply a shortage of capital. It is also the absence, in many markets, of the platforms, institutions and enabling environments needed to channel that capital toward scalable businesses and commercially sustainable opportunities. Ultimately, the next phase of MENA’s economic growth will be defined not only by how much capital the region attracts, but by how effectively that capital is converted into productive capacity, competitive businesses and high-quality jobs.

MENA has no shortage of entrepreneurial talent or ambitious businesses across sectors, sizes and stages of growth. Venture capital has become an important source of financing for the region’s early-stage technology and tech-enabled startups. Yet a financing gap remains for established, medium-sized businesses that need growth capital, stronger governance and operational support to expand across markets. This is where private equity can play a much larger role, helping promising local businesses develop into regional champions and drivers of economic growth.

Beyond dealmaking

Private equity is often reduced to financial engineering: buying, restructuring and eventually selling privately held companies to generate returns for investors. But its potential economic contribution extends well beyond the transaction itself.

Growth-orientated private equity can provide longer-term capital while helping management teams improve operations, strengthen governance, build institutional capabilities, enter new markets and invest in productivity and innovation. For medium-sized businesses, this combination of capital and operational support can help overcome barriers to scale that bank lending or venture capital alone may not address.

That impact is not automatic. It depends on the investment horizon, capital structure and approach of the investor. But when capital is paired with operating discipline and a credible long-term growth strategy, private equity can help companies make the transition from successful local businesses to competitive regional enterprises.

Private equity is not new to MENA. Over the past two decades, the region has seen the emergence of increasingly sophisticated private equity investors, supported by institutional investors, sovereign wealth funds and family offices. According to MAGNiTT, disclosed private equity activity in MENA totalled $27.6 billion across 356 deals from 2020 to 2024. The UAE accounted for the largest share of transactions, while Saudi Arabia became an increasingly important market; together, the two countries accounted for 68% of regional private equity transactions over the five-year period.

These figures illustrate the growing role of private capital in financing businesses across sectors that will help shape the region’s economic future, including health care, financial services, logistics, manufacturing and energy.

Yet private equity activity remains heavily concentrated in the region’s largest and most developed investment markets. The question, then, is not whether private equity can work in MENA. It is how it can be deployed more broadly to support economic revival, deepen regional integration and generate development impact in markets where growth capital remains scarce.

Small and medium-sized enterprises make up the vast majority of formal-sector businesses across MENA. Helping the most promising among them become more productive and competitive can therefore be a powerful tool for job creation and economic growth.

This is particularly relevant in fragile economies such as Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, where businesses often face limited access to growth capital, fragmented ownership structures and weak links to regional and international markets. Strategically deployed private equity can help address some of these bottlenecks through recapitalisation, stronger corporate governance, consolidation, market expansion and access to regional networks.

Private equity’s multiyear investment horizon can also be particularly relevant for economies seeking to move toward higher-productivity and more export-orientated models of growth. But its success should ultimately be measured less by deal count or the volume of capital deployed than by whether those investments result in stronger companies, greater productivity and sustainable employment.

Building more integrated ecosystems

Strong investment ecosystems are built when governments, development finance institutions, sovereign wealth funds, local fund managers, entrepreneurs and institutional investors play complementary roles in reducing barriers and directing financial and technical resources toward productive businesses.

This is where private equity fits into the broader regional picture: as a bridge between large pools of capital and companies with the potential to scale.

Governments have a central role in creating the conditions that make this possible, from predictable regulation and investor protection to effective insolvency frameworks, competition policy and cross-border trade. But public investment cannot substitute for private risk capital, particularly the growth financing companies need to expand into new markets and industries.

Development finance institutions such as the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) increasingly combine direct financing with blended finance, risk-sharing and private-capital mobilisation tools designed to make investment possible in markets or projects that might otherwise struggle to attract commercial capital.

These tools become particularly important in fragile economies, where the risk-return profile can deter institutional investors. Blended-finance structures, guarantees, risk-sharing facilities and co-investment platforms with credible local partners can lower some of those barriers and help create a pipeline of investable opportunities with clearer governance and exit pathways.

Regional sovereign wealth funds can play a similar catalytic role by acting as anchor investors, reducing perceived risk and attracting global institutional capital.

A recent example is Brookfield’s July 2026 first close of Brookfield Middle East Partners, a PIF-anchored private equity fund that raised approximately $2 billion from the Public Investment Fund and other global and regional institutional investors. The fund will target buyouts and growth investments across the Middle East, with a focus on the GCC and a goal of allocating 50% of its investments to Saudi Arabia.

The significance of such a fund is not simply its size. It demonstrates how sovereign anchor capital, global investment expertise and a regional mandate can be combined to build a larger pipeline of investable businesses and increase institutional confidence in the region.

Political instability will remain a major constraint on MENA’s economic potential. Private equity cannot, on its own, resolve fragility, institutional weakness or regulatory fragmentation. But stronger and more integrated investment ecosystems can help ensure that capital does more than circulate within the region’s already mature markets.

For the wealthier GCC economies, the challenge is increasingly to deploy capital in ways that deepen productive capacity and strengthen the private sector. For less-developed and fragile economies, it is to use local investment managers, development finance and risk-sharing structures to turn viable businesses into investable platforms capable of attracting long-term capital.

MENA’s next growth chapter will therefore depend not only on mobilising more money. It will depend on building the institutions and investment structures that convert capital into productive companies, regional champions and high-quality jobs.

That is where private equity can make its most consequential contribution.

August 20th 2026, 7:29 pm

Pinnacle launches VC fund to back Saudi growth companies, secondary deals

Wamda

Press release:

Saudi Arabia-based investment firm Pinnacle has launched a venture capital-focused fund targeting growth-stage companies and secondary investment opportunities in the Kingdom.

The fund will invest through both primary funding rounds and secondary transactions, providing investors with exposure to established Saudi growth companies while seeking to increase liquidity within the Kingdom’s venture capital ecosystem.

The launch comes as Saudi Arabia’s venture market enters a more mature phase, with a growing number of established and profitable growth-stage companies. However, Pinnacle argues that access to growth capital and exit opportunities is still more limited than in developed markets, which creates a gap between the maturity of the startup ecosystem and its liquidity infrastructure.

The fund aims to address this gap by providing growth capital, facilitating secondary transactions, and supporting the development of Saudi technology companies.

Its investment strategy will focus on technology businesses across several sectors where Pinnacle sees long-term growth drivers.

In fintech, the fund sees opportunities arising from regulatory developments and the ongoing shift towards digital financial services.

It will also target businesses benefiting from Riyadh’s development as a global city, including companies operating across housing, mobility, real estate and urban services.

E-commerce is another focus area, with Pinnacle identifying room for further growth as e-commerce penetration in Saudi Arabia remains below levels seen in more developed global markets.

The fund will also target health and lifestyle, particularly as greater health awareness drives demand for preventative care and related services.

Through this strategy, Pinnacle aims to provide growth capital to Saudi technology companies while supporting greater liquidity and secondary-market activity within the Kingdom’s venture ecosystem.

August 20th 2026, 7:29 pm

Voice AI startup HeyBreez raises $2.5 million Seed round

Wamda

Press release:

HeyBreez, the operational layer for enterprise voice AI, announces an oversubscribed $2.5 million seed fundraise. 

The raise was led by Lunara Partners – a multi-stage investment firm investing in tech & tech-enabled businesses, chiefly across the MENA region. Other participating investors included Jabbar Group, DASH Ventures, and prominent founders and strategic angel investors. 

The proceeds will be used to deepen platform infrastructure; accelerate product development; and grow the team for sales expansion across enterprises, agencies and developers in the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East. Timing of the seed round has been driven entirely by market demand, to keep pace with the growth in call volumes and inbound requests for HeyBreez’s services.

HeyBreez is flourishing in a market where Voice AI has reached human parity (i.e., artificial intelligence systems now match or exceed human capabilities in recognising, generating, or translating speech). However, the infrastructure to run Voice AI at enterprise scale has not been reached – which is where HeyBreez excels. 

Most voice platforms get the agent talking, then hand back the rest. HeyBreez sits at the operational layer; the part that handles everything around and after the call: retries; callbacks; follow-up logic; branching journeys; telephony; and integrations. These are the workflows that transform a voice agent into a real business process – able to run reliable, low-latency conversations at production scale.

Karim Malhas, Founder & CEO of HeyBreez, said:

"Everyone in this market helped companies make the call. No one helped them run the operation behind it. That is the hard part, and what we built for from day one. This round lets us put HeyBreez in front of all the teams needing it and asking for it. We have a proven product, several different customer types, we’re logging over a million calls a month already, and there is much more to come.” 

HeyBreez is already achieving significant traction, proving its enterprise-grade production output. In a single month, its platform has run over one million calls. Campaign dialling on the platform easily reaches 10,000 calls a day for individual clients.

HeyBreez serves four customer types via a single infrastructure: enterprise clients with dedicated solution support; agencies and resellers building on top of the platform; individual developers and small businesses on self-serve plans; and regional AI players embedding the technology directly into their own products. HeyBreez supports multi-language voice workloads across industries where voice is still the dominant channel, such as: banking, healthcare, logistics, hospitality, and customer experience. 

HeyBreez is building impressive partnerships to build out its channel. Arabic.ai and Xaia are solutions integration partners, reselling HeyBreez to their own enterprise client bases across the region. HeyBreez expects more such partnerships to extend its reach into new markets and verticals, without requiring relationship-building from scratch.

Said Murad, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Lunara Partners, commented:

"Every platform in this market solved the conversation. Almost none solved the operation around it, the retries, callbacks, integrations, and governance that determine whether voice agents hold up in production. HeyBreez was built for that layer from day one, and the volume already running through the platform shows it. With a multi-channel commercial model and positioning aligned with the rise of Arabic-language and sovereign-cloud voice AI, we believe HeyBreez can become a core piece of the enterprise voice stack globally." 

HeyBreez is formally headquartered in the US with offices in Amman and Dubai and is designed for global deployment. The MENA region is its commercial starting point, supported by rising demand for Arabic-language voice automation and the sovereign-cloud and data-residency mandates being shaped by the GCC’s national champions. The platform is already running across MENA, Europe, the USA, and LATAM. Arabic is now getting the voice infrastructure it deserves, while also creating a platform built to run anywhere.

August 20th 2026, 7:29 pm

XSquare raises pre-Seed round to expand into Saudi Arabia

Wamda

Press release:

XSquare, a business-to-business (B2B) payments company operating in partnership with Mastercard, today announced the successful close of its Pre-Seed funding round. The round was led by Raed Ventures, with participation from AngelSpark, 500 Global and Oraseya Capital, a Dubai government-backed venture fund.

With the new capital, XSquare is scaling what it describes as the region's first and only payment orchestration layer built purely for B2B. The platform unifies multiple payment rails behind a single integration, allowing businesses to collect, pay and reconcile across providers without stitching together separate systems. XSquare is launching with rails from Telr, Geidea, VaultsPay, Spare and Tess Payments, with further partners to follow.

Under its partnership with Mastercard, the company is also bringing Mastercard's B2B payments product to market, enabling card-funded supplier and vendor payments that settle directly to bank accounts. XSquare is deploying the program with marquee government and large corporate clients, unlocking commercial card economics on business spend that has traditionally sat outside the card ecosystem.

Beyond its UAE base, XSquare is live in Qatar, where it holds a presence at the Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) and is partnering with leading banks and regulated payment partners in Doha. The Qatar launch marks the company’s first cross-border expansion and lays the groundwork for a wider GCC footprint.

“B2B payments in this region have been underserved for too long, forced onto tools built for consumer markets. We are building the payment infrastructure that regional businesses need: card and bank rails, orchestration and reconciliation, all in one place. Having Raed Ventures lead this round, alongside AngelSpark, 500 Global and Oraseya Capital, is a strong endorsement of that vision and of the traction we are seeing with Banks, Government entities and large Corporates.”

Tanvir Shah, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, XSquare

“The B2B payments opportunity across the GCC is large and still largely untapped, and XSquare is one of the few teams with both the banking depth and technical execution to capture it. Their early traction with Banks, Government entities and enterprise clients, together with their progress on the Mastercard B2B programme, gave us the conviction to lead this round. We look forward to supporting the team as they scale across the region.”

Saed Nashef, Founding Partner, Raed Ventures

XSquare plans to use the funding to expand its rail and bank partnerships, grow its engineering and commercial teams, and begin operations in Saudi Arabia.

 

August 20th 2026, 7:29 pm

AILA raises $3 million pre-Series A to expand personalised learning platform

Wamda

Press release:

AILA, a Saudi education technology company focused on AI-powered personalised learning, has raised $3 million in a pre-Series A funding round. 

The round was led by Rua Growth Fund, with participation from Jo Academy, 500 Global, Bunat VC, and Fikr Ventures. Jo Academy, a leading EdTech pioneer in Jordan with a growing regional presence, also joined the round as a strategic investor, bringing valuable experience in education and digital learning. 

AILA develops technology that helps students learn based on their individual needs. Its platform identifies learning gaps, personalises learning and practice, and provides students with support based on their progress. It also gives teachers and school leaders clearer insights into student performance, helping them identify where support is needed. 

The company’s products include AILA Tests, an AI-native learning platform for personalised exam preparation for schools, and AILA Labs, AILA’s dedicated R&D hub focused on researching, developing, and testing new AI-powered solutions for education. 

The new funding will support AILA across three main areas: 

● Expanding into new regional and international markets 

● Further developing the product’s AI-powered learning experience and capabilities 

● Reaching more students, educators, schools, and education systems 

“This investment lets us bring personalised, AI-native learning to more students at a moment when education systems across the region are rethinking what's possible with technology," said Yousef Alsayed, CEO of AILA.

"Arabic-speaking students deserve learning experiences built for them, not just translated for them. AILA is leading the way in the region, building AI-native education from the ground up, and their traction with Saudi schools speaks volumes about its strong product-market fit. We invested in AILA because we believe the future of EdTech in this region will be built here, by local innovators like AILA," said Alaa Jarrar, CEO, Jo Academy. 

AILA is building an AI-native assessment platform that helps schools and teachers understand each student’s proficiency, identify learning gaps, and focus support where it is needed most. We were drawn to the team’s ability to turn assessment data into actionable insights for educators and targeted practice for students. Rua is proud to lead this round and support Yousef, Abdulaziz, and the AILA team as they scale Saudi-built AI education solutions for schools and education systems across the region and beyond," said Turki Aljoaib, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Rua Growth Fund. 

The investment marks the next stage of AILA’s growth. Alongside financial support, the investor group brings experience, networks, and market knowledge that can help the company enter new markets and build partnerships across the education sector. 

AILA’s long-term goal is to become a leading AI-native education platform and make high-quality personalised learning accessible to learners at scale. 

August 20th 2026, 7:29 pm

Khwarizmi Ventures partially exits Bosta, marking sixth portfolio exit

Wamda

Press release:

Khwarizmi Ventures is thrilled to announce the successful partial exit from its portfolio company,  Bosta, marking another important step forward for the firm, bringing the total to 6 successful  exits from Tamara, POSRocket, Fatura, Melltoo, Qawafel, and now Bosta. The firm has  distributed capital back to Fund I investors twice in less than 5 years since the launch date. 

Khwarizmi Ventures invested in Bosta three times, starting with its Series A round and later leading  one of the follow-on rounds, backing the founding team for their ambitious vision, customer-centric approach, and ability to execute in one of the region's most dynamic sectors. As Bosta  scaled from an emerging startup into a market leader, Khwarizmi Ventures completed a partial exit, realising about a 3x net multiple across its total position. This step reflects the value created  through Bosta’s growth and the strength of the partnership built from the company’s earliest stage.

"We're incredibly proud of Bosta team and grateful to be part of their journey. This  achievement reflects the founders' vision, relentless execution, and the strength of  innovation emerging from the MENA startup ecosystem. We look forward to the  company's next chapter of growth. 

— Abdulaziz AlTurki, Managing Partner at Khwarizmi Ventures 

Since its founding in 2017, Bosta has transformed logistics and last-mile delivery by providing  businesses with reliable, technology-driven shipping solutions. Through continuous innovation  and strong execution, the company has expanded its reach, strengthened its market position, and  delivered meaningful value to merchants and consumers. 

"Bosta was founded to solve one of the biggest challenges facing e-commerce in our region:  reliable, scalable last-mile delivery. Over the years, we’ve evolved into a platform that  supports thousands of businesses and enables commerce across multiple markets. This  outcome reflects how far Bosta has come and the strength of the team behind it. We’re excited  to build on this foundation and continue expanding Bosta’s impact across the region." 

— Mohamed Ezzat, Founder & CEO at Bosta 

This achievement reinforces Khwarizmi Ventures' commitment to partnering with exceptional  founders to build category-defining technology companies across the region. We congratulate the  entire Bosta team, including its employees, customers, investors, and partners, on their success  and wish them continued success in the years ahead. 

August 20th 2026, 7:29 pm

Cyfr Capital backs five Omani startups in new Seed Fund investments

Wamda

Press release:

Oman-based venture capital firm Cyfr Capital has completed five new investments through its Seed Fund in collaboration with Future Fund Oman, backing startups operating across automotive commerce, food delivery, tourism, artificial intelligence and food packaging.

The five companies are Sooq Cars, iO Eats, Darrbak, Decoil and Pack’N. The investments form part of Cyfr Capital’s strategy to support early-stage companies developing products and services for the Omani market with potential to scale.

Sooq Cars operates an automotive trading platform serving Oman and the wider Gulf. Its services span vehicles available from stock, imports, spare parts and leasing, and the company has a user base exceeding one million, according to Cyfr Capital.

iO Eats operates a food delivery application supported by cloud kitchens across six locations. The platform allows users to order from more than 30 restaurants in a single basket.

Darrbak operates a tourism discovery and booking platform in Oman, offering more than 260 experiences across adventure, sports, nature, arts and culture. It works with more than 76 local providers.

Decoil develops data and artificial intelligence solutions designed to help organisations process unstructured data and convert it into actionable insights.

Pack’N operates in the food and beverage sector, providing customised packaging and smart storage solutions to businesses.

The investments are intended to provide the five companies with capital to develop their products and services and expand their operations, as part of the collaboration between Cyfr Capital and Future Fund Oman to support early-stage businesses in the Sultanate.

The parties did not disclose the value of the individual investments, the total amount invested or the equity stakes acquired in the five companies.

August 20th 2026, 7:29 pm

Tax Star closes $1.75 million Seed round to expand across GCC

Wamda

Press release:

Tax Star, the UAE's first AI-powered corporate tax software platform, announced it has closed a $1.75 million seed funding round. The raise comes as Tax Star positions itself around one of its most significant regulatory milestones to date, its status as a pre-approved Accredited Service Provider (ASP) for UAE e-invoicing. The round was backed primarily by angel investors.     

Tax Star built its reputation as the first AI-powered corporate tax compliance software in the UAE, helping businesses navigate the country's evolving tax landscape with automation and intelligence at the core of its product. This new funding builds directly on that foundation, with the company now doubling down on its role in the UAE's e-invoicing rollout, a mandate that will require businesses across the UAE to appoint an ASP and implement a compliant e-invoicing process connected to the UAE Electronic Invoicing System.

As a pre-approved ASP, Tax Star is positioned to serve as a trusted bridge between businesses and the UAE's e-invoicing infrastructure. Being pre-approved validates Tax Star's technical readiness ahead of key regulatory deadlines and signals to the market that the company is positioned to capture demand as UAE businesses work to become compliant.

Proceeds from the round will be directed toward three core areas: go-to-market expansion, product development, and simplifying compliance for businesses navigating the UAE's e-invoicing requirements. Rather than allocating the raise narrowly toward specific accounting-software integrations or new-market entry alone, Tax Star said the funding is designed to strengthen the of what businesses need to become, and stay, compliant.

The raise also supports Tax Star's broader regional ambitions. The company has stated plans to expand into the GCC     as part of its longer-term roadmap. The UAE's e-invoicing framework and Tax Star's early positioning within it, is expected to serve as proof as the company pursues similar opportunities in other markets undergoing their own digital tax transformations.

Tax Star also acknowledges that being part of the Plug and Play and Dubai Founders HQ (DFHQ) start-up program helped Tax Star to prepare themselves for this investment round and helped refine its future expansion plans. The company is also part of the Microsoft for Startups Program and is aspiring to join Dubai's D33 initiative.

The timing of the raise aligns with a fast-approaching regulatory calendar. Businesses in the UAE with annual revenue of AED 50 million or more      face an ASP- appointment deadline of October 30, 2026, ahead of the first mandatory implementation phase for businesses with annual revenue of AED 50 million or more in January 2027. Tax Star said the new funding is intended to help ensure UAE businesses, regardless of size, are equipped to meet these deadlines without disruption to their operations.

"This funding allows us to focus on what matters most right now: easing the compliance burden for businesses across the GCC as e-invoicing becomes a reality," said Rayhan Aleem, Co-founder and CEO of Tax Star. "Being a pre-approved ASP puts us in a strong position to support businesses through this transition, and this raise lets us invest in the team, the product, and the go-to-market work needed to do that at scale."

Tax Star is the UAE's first AI-powered corporate tax software platform and a pre-approved Accredited Service Provider for UAE e-invoicing. The company is also the only Accredited Service Provider listed on the Xero and QuickBooks App Stores offering native integration with those accounting platforms, alongside smooth integrations with Zoho, Odoo, and Naqood. Tax Star helps businesses simplify tax and compliance obligations through automation and AI, with plans to expand its footprint across the GCC and into Europe.

August 20th 2026, 7:29 pm

Rozenama raises $150,000 pre-Seed to scale e-commerce platform across Iraq

Wamda

Press release:

Iraq-based e-commerce startup Rozenama has raised $150,000 in a pre-Seed round from Iraqi entrepreneur and Aljasmi Perfumes CEO Mohammed Haider.

Founded in Baghdad in 2022 by Abbas Muhil and Mohammed Fawzi, Rozenama provides an e-commerce platform built for Iraqi merchants. Its infrastructure incorporates local delivery companies and payment methods, including cash on delivery.

The company is targeting a market where many retailers continue to sell through social media platforms such as Instagram and WhatsApp, receiving orders through direct messages and manually managing inventory. Rozenama is seeking to bring these processes into a structured digital system that enables merchants to manage and scale their online operations.

Over the past 12 months, Rozenama says its number of active merchants has increased from 250 to more than 900, while registered users have surpassed 13,000.

The company plans to launch a fully rebuilt version of its platform on 25 August 2026.

Proceeds from the round will primarily be invested in engineering, including the platform rebuild, and expanding Rozenama’s merchant base across Iraqi governorates outside Baghdad. The company said markets outside the capital have accounted for most of its growth over the past six months.

August 20th 2026, 7:29 pm

Jordan’s liwwa closes $18.5 million pre-Series B round

Wamda

Press release:

Jordan-based Fintech liwwa closed an $18.5 million pre-Series B round of equity and debt. Founded in 2015, liwwa employs technology across its operations to provide tailored financial solutions. It also owns and operates the liwwa Investment Platform, a peer-to-peer platform that enables retail investors to finance liwwa loans and earn returns. 

The round included $4.5 million in equity investment led by existing investors, DASH Ventures, Dutch Entrepreneurial Development Bank FMO, Edgo, and Bank al Etihad, in addition to German Development Finance Institution DEG approving an investment of $0.79 million. The round also included debt contributions from a network of local banks and international development finance institutions; Bank al Etihad increased its debt financing agreement by $5 million, whereas an additional $8.5 million debt facility was raised from the Capital Bank of Jordan under the NASIRA agreement, Jordan Kuwait Bank and Triodos Bank extended a $1.1 million and a $2.2 million finance facility respectively, PROPARCO approved a €1< facility and Triple Jump approved a $500,000 loan.

liwwa will be utilizing the funds for its growth and expansion plans. liwwa’s CEO, Dennis Ardis, shared his thought on the funding round, “With this funding round, we have yet taken another major step towards accomplishing our goals. We will continue to grow as the market grows by bringing in innovative Fintech solutions and cash flow-based lending."

September 11th 2022, 7:40 am

Medical training platform 5 Quarters raises Seed round

Wamda

Press release:

Cairo-based medical Startup "5 Quarters " has raised Seed investment from a Saudi angel investor.

Founded in 2016 by Mohamed Salah and Noha Emad, 5 Quarters started as a medical and dental courses startup and has been in the market for medical education for more than 6 years mainly in Egypt.

The name comes from the 4 branches of The Healthcare sector; medical, dental, pharmaceutical, and physiotherapy. The fifth quadrant is what they promise; the extra value you won't find elsewhere is what they offer.

The startup offers healthcare professionals online courses (available on its web and mobile-based platform) by the best trainers in their field with the latest technology and content with ADA-accredited certificates, in addition to practical training and on-ground courses to practice what they have learned to get the best benefit and show their work.

They have served over 15k customers to date in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iraq, UAE, Tunisia, and Jordan.

They found that healthcare graduates and professionals were suffering from three main issues; outdated content and lack of good training in the faculties, expensive traditional training, etc...

5 Quarters addresses all of this, offering a wide range of online courses by the best trainers with ADA-accredited certificates. Along with practical training and offline courses.

5 Quarters plans to use the investment to fuel its growth in both directions; horizontal growth by expanding our practical practice into Saudi Arabia and vertical growth by adding new services to the medical sector professionals, clinics and hospitals.

They added that Since their early beginnings they were driven by youth's intense passion and a genuine sense of duty to help the medical community everywhere by providing better education while maintaining affordable prices.

September 11th 2022, 7:40 am

Mena startups raised $378 million in August 2022

Wamda

Startups in the Middle East and North Africa region (Mena) raised $378 million across 33 deals, a 260 per cent increase in funding value month-on-month but a relative dip in terms of deal count. 

This takes the total amassed in the past eight months to $2.2 billion, a 29 per cent increase from the $1.7 billion recorded during the same period last year.

Last month saw two of the biggest funding rounds recorded this year in the region's tech ecosystem, with fintechs Tabby and Tamara raising $150 million and $100 million respectively, making up 66 per cent of the VC funding value. 

Setting aside the two outliers, just $128 million was invested in startups across Mena in August. 

Thanks to Tabby's large round, the UAE attained the number one spot on the list of the countries that attracted the maximum funding with $233 million. 

Saudi Arabia was the second largest recipient of funding with $103 million raised across six deals, with Tamara being its biggest fundraiser, while Egypt followed in the third position with $38 million. Both UAE and Egypt were neck to neck in terms of deal count.

The modest recovery seen in August has been widely felt across all funding stages with the earliest stages of funding witnessing the highest deal count. Out of 33 deals, 15 went to startups across the pre-Seed and Seed stages, cumulatively amounting to $14.5 million.

The lingering uncertainty in market conditions have largely dented the ability of growth stage companies to raise new rounds of equity, and so we are likely to see more extention or bridge rounds over the coming few months. This was evident in the case of Egypt's furniture e-commerce company Homzmart and UAE-based adtech ArabyAds and digital real estate investment platform Stake. These startups also happen to be among the top fundraisers last month. 

Startups operating in the fintech space piqued investor interest in August particularly startups in buy now pay later, crypto currency and neobanking. In terms of value, fintech remains the best-funded sector, representing 68 per cent of the total funding activity. E-commerce came in second place with $32 million raised across five deals, followed closely by adtech. Yet, SaaS startups attracted the highest number of deals with six investments aggregating to $16 million.

Global funding activity remains subdued, with only 13 deals out of 33 attracting foreign direct investments. 

Regionally, Saudi Arabia-based investors were the most active, taking part in 10 deals, followed by their counterparts from the UAE with eight deals.

As ever, startups with an all-male founding team attracted the bulk of funding last month with 99 per cent, while the remaining 1 per cent went to startups founded or co-founded by women.

Key market highlights 

Apart from the funding, last month saw a rise in the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity.

UAE-based proptech Huspy, which recently closed a $37 million Series A round, announced its takeover of two mortgage brokers: Just Mortgages and Finance Labs, while logistics startup Cartlow purchased Melltoo. This came on the back of its recent completion of a $18 million round. 

Other deals include Maya Group's acquisition of Conktr, Astratech of fintech PayBy and KABI of HR tech startup BLOOVO.

In August, a couple of startup-focused funds were launched. Algeria Startup Fund announced its new fund worth $411 million earmarked for local startups, while G42 also launched a $10 billion fund to invest in growth stage startups.

Last month, Mosool, Jwava, Cargoz, Mintroute, OBM Education and Sponix Tecb did not disclose the exact amount they raised. We have assigned them a conservative amount of $100,000 each. 

These monthly reports are a collaboration between Wamda and Digital Digest.

 

September 8th 2022, 12:10 am

Endure Capital closes first round of $50 million fund

Wamda

Press release:

Endure Capital announced that it has completed the first close of its new $50 million fund to invest in early-stage startups in pan-Africa. The fund, Endure 21, is Endure Capital’s second early-stage venture capital fund and will focus its investments primarily on impact-driven early-stage startups in Africa, with a selective approach to investing in growth-stage startups globally.

The limited partners who have invested in the fund include British International Investment (BII) – the UK’s Development Finance Institution and impact investor, formerly known as CDC Group; The Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprise Development Agency (MSMEDA) – Egypt’s Social Fund for Development; and founders of different leading startups of the region. 

“BII is excited to be partnering with Endure Capital, a well-embedded leading local fund manager in Egypt’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. I am delighted that our partnership on Endure21 will help support the next generation of visionary entrepreneurs in Egypt, providing them with the capital to build transformative businesses that are creating innovative solutions and accelerating productive, sustainable and inclusive growth across society.” commented Abhinav Sinha, Managing Director and Head of Technology and Telecoms, British International Investment.

“MSMEDA is proud to partner with Endure Capital to promote the Egyptian economy by supporting the entrepreneurial environment and enabling young innovators and entrepreneurs,” commented Hany Emad, Director and Head of the central sector for financing small projects at MSMEDA.

Launched in 2015 by serial entrepreneur Tarek Fahim, Endure Capital has established itself as one of the leading VC firms in the region. Its first fund was one of the early institutional investors in Careem which was acquired by Uber for $3.1 billion in 2019. The acquisition remains the biggest tech exit the Middle East has seen. The investments from Endure’s first fund also include regional B2B e-commerce leader MaxAB and Breadfast, the grocery delivery startup that has pioneered dark stores in Egypt. 

Endure’s debut portfolio also includes international iconic startups such as Boom Supersonic, Tribal Credit, and Aspect Biosystems. The first fund has made a 43 per cent IRR and 4.3x multiple on its investments, which puts it in the top quartile of performing funds of its vintage year. 

Commenting on the first close of its second fund, Endure Capital’s founder Tarek Fahim, said, “Endure is committed to adding value to the region’s flourishing startup founders, and ecosystem, and we love to partner with founders that relentlessly pursue entrepreneurship as a means for value creation to society and who are building lasting businesses.” 

With Endure 21, the firm will follow a sector-agnostic approach and invest in 24 companies. Endure Capital will reserve half the fund for follow-on investments in its top-performing companies from its portfolio. 

For its second fund, Mohamed Noweir joined Endure Capital as a partner to lead the investment team. Noweir has over 15 years of business and startup experience across IBM, McKinsey & Company, Careem, and Rocket Internet. 

The new fund has already made several investments including co-leading Series A of Brimore, Egypt’s leading social commerce platform; investing in Cassbana, a BNPL alternative credit solution for SMEs; and in Pylon, a smart infrastructure startup providing a subscription-based “Smart Metering as a Service” (SMaaS) for electricity and water companies in emerging markets.

“There are a lot of exceptional founders in the region and we are super excited to partner with them early on in their entrepreneurial journey. And we are also thrilled to kickstart “Endure…Pay it Forward” initiative where we work with our portfolio founders to mentor aspiring founders and give back to our new budding startup environment.” commented Mohamed Noweir.

Endure has also launched the Endure Opportunity Fund which will double down on its previous top investments. “We are here to serve our founders in the long-term, and want to invest in their startups’ entire lifecycle – our strategy as a firm is to provide patient, long-term support to entrepreneurs,” concluded Tarek Fahim.

September 7th 2022, 9:56 am

UAE-based fintech Ziina expands to Jordan

Wamda

Press release:

Ziina, the UAE-based, YC-backed start-up on a mission to bring financial freedom to every person in the Middle East, is coming to Jordan. Having launched their digital wallet in February 2022, and their proprietary payment keyboard, the Ziiboard, just this month, the Jordanian expansion is the latest milestone in a rapid succession of innovation for the fintech company.  

For co-founders Faisal and Sarah Toukan, Ziina’s first international foray represents a sort of homecoming.  Both founders grew up in Amman before continuing their higher studies in the United States. Their decision to move to Jordan before any other Middle Eastern country came out of their desire to uplift and strengthen their home country by expanding access to financial services.

Faisal Toukan, CEO and Co-Founder of Ziina said, “The median age in Jordan is around 23 years old, which makes most of the population digitally native. The Central Bank of Jordan has recognized this, naming microfinance, digital financial services, and small and medium-sized enterprise finance among its core sectoral pillars. As a proud Jordanian, I am delighted to introduce Ziina to my home country. Our team have worked tirelessly to develop a product that makes the payment process infinitely faster and more convenient, while also prioritising a delightful user experience. We have no doubt that Ziina will make getting paid much easier for every single Jordanian.”

Today, Ziina is one of the few MENA companies to make it to the Y-Combinator. The company successfully raised $9 million during a Seed round from prominent investors, including Avenir Growth, Goodwater Capital, ANIM, Oman Technology Fund, Class 5 Global, Long Journey Ventures, Graph Ventures, Jabbar Internet Group, Wamda, and FJ Labs, as well as employees and execs at PayPal, Instagram, Stripe, Revolut, Venmo, Brex, Checkout.com, Notion, Block, Airbnb and Deel.

Heralding a new age of digital consumer finance requires a strong team. The Jordanian siblings along with their Californian cofounder Andrew Gold have recruited a world-class team with experience from the likes of Apple, Uber, Coinbase, Careem, Yandex, Funding Circle, Bain & Co, Talabat and Oracle. 

A standout feature of Ziina’s product is its design, having been recognised and awarded nine international UI/UX design awards, including the Red Dot Award. The interface allows users to easily send and receive payments to anyone in just a few taps. Ziina eliminates the need for tedious IBAN and swift code entry and makes the payment experience seamless and social, with GIFs, photos, text and emojis.

Ziina believes access shouldn’t be a privilege but a right. The company is focused on developing state-of-the-art tools that are delightful to use, empowering individuals to gain more control of their financial future. Ziina believes this financial prosperity should be in the palm of your hand; it is pioneering the future of personal finance.

Peer-to-peer payment services are on the rise globally as they eliminate the need to make physical cash payments. For Ziina, Jordan represents the next exciting chapter in the company’s mission toward financial freedom in the Middle East. 

September 7th 2022, 9:56 am

TruKKer raises $100 million pre-IPO round

Wamda

Press release:

Investcorp, a leading global alternative investment firm, today announced that Investcorp Saudi Pre-IPO Growth Fund LP led the Pre-IPO round in privately-held TruKKer Holding Limited, MENA’s largest digital freight network with a leading position across Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and neighbouring countries. Investcorp led the initial close of this round with a $51 million investment alongside new and existing investors.

Hazem Ben-Gacem, Co-Chief Executive Officer of Investcorp commented: “Saudi Arabia is increasingly rich in highly investable companies, from fast-growth technology businesses like TruKKer to long-established family businesses that have grown consistently and are now looking for capital to implement more ambitious expansion plans. We are seeing a lot of interest in pre-IPO rounds as scale-ups secure greater market share and more Saudi businesses prove themselves successful on a national and regional basis. TruKKer is just one example of the kind of company that we believe will prove attractive to institutional investors as the Saudi ecosystem matures, and our Pre-IPO fund will focus on exactly these kinds of high-growth businesses.”

“We are excited to add TruKKer to our portfolio and are keen to work with the founders of this regional champion to explore a possible market listing, as a continuation of our strategy and in line with our track record,” said Walid Majdalani, Head of Private Equity MENA and Southeast Asia at Investcorp. “Thanks to its proprietary technology, TruKKer is ideally positioned to continue its strong growth while reducing carbon emissions across its markets. We look forward to our partnership with TruKKer and contributing our strategic and capital markets resources as well as our local and global insights to accelerate the company’s next phase of growth.”

This investment is part of the recently launched Investcorp Saudi Pre-IPO Growth Fund LP, targeting equity growth capital investments across a range of companies primarily based in Saudi Arabia with the potential to access the capital markets within 3 years. The fund provides investors with an opportunity to gain exposure to growing and market-leading businesses in strategic, high growth and underserved sub-sectors such as business services, transport and logistics, healthcare and consumer. 

The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are key markets for TruKKer and represent a significant portion of the company’s revenues. The United Arab Emirates market has witnessed strong growth over the years in large part due to the development of UAE – KSA cross-border lanes with over 30,000 annual shipments transported by TruKKer, a key value proposition as the company continues to focus on scaling its network and looking to gain market share. 

“TruKKer is at a key inflection point towards scaling its network and market share. Today, the company continues to grow exponentially serving over 700 B2B enterprise clients and is on track to cross $200 million in revenues in 2022. The TruKKer team is proud to be delivering on its vision of making a positive contribution to the community by having close to 10,000 drivers generating more than 70% of their monthly income on the TruKKer platform. Our technology also enables us to optimize truckloads to reduce empty miles and idle time thereby helping us achieve our sustainability objectives.” commented Gaurav Biswas, Founder & CEO of TruKKer.

“We welcome Investcorp and are excited to partner with them through the next growth chapter of the company. Together with our partners, we look forward to continuing to bolster the company and create significant shareholder returns with a focus on healthy unit economics” adds Gaurav. 

In 2008, Investcorp established a dedicated presence in Saudi Arabia, and TruKKer marks Investcorp’s eighth investment in the country, with multiple successful public listings on the Saudi Stock Exchange, including BinDawood Holdings, Theeb Rent A Car, Leejam Sports Company and L’Azurde. 

September 7th 2022, 9:56 am

UAE’s Tabby expands to Egypt

Wamda

Press release:

Tabby, the Middle East’s leading payments and shopping app, announced its launch in Egypt, enabling shoppers to pay over time without any interest or fees. Tabby works with multiple brands including Lacoste, L'azurde, Faces, In Your Shoe, KAI Collections, Ariika, Marcqa, Dresscode and Floward, among others, to offer flexible payments at checkout, creating an opportunity for Egyptians to stay in control of their spending and make the most out of their money.

Tabby currently ranks among the top 10 shopping apps in the Middle East with more than two million active shoppers. With Tabby’s “Split in 4” product, shoppers will be able to split their purchases into four interest-free payments at store checkouts, both online and offline. The Tabby app lets customers discover where they can split their payments and track their spending. Tabby also helps drive high-intent traffic to thousands of its retail partners. 

Ahmed Khalil, Tabby Egypt’s GM, said, “Expanding in Egypt is a proud moment for us at Tabby. We’re excited to provide Egyptians with flexible and honest payment experiences with no interest and no fees. We’re also delighted to be a growth partner for our retail partners by helping them tap into millions of active shoppers”. Khalil added, “After securing $275 million in funding from leading global and regional investors, we’re looking forward to becoming Egypt’s preferred BNPL services provider.”

Tabby’s launch in Egypt is an expansion of the growing maturity of the fintech landscape in the region and the rise of e-commerce in Egypt. The app is building financial products designed to create financial freedom in the way people shop, earn and save by reshaping their relationship with money. Built on trust, not interest, the app enables commerce while encouraging responsible spending by empowering its shoppers with more purchasing power.

Since its launch in 2019, the company has been committed to helping its customers navigate the complex relationship with money by crafting honest products and stories built to champion their financial goals and help them create a relationship with money they can be proud of. 

September 6th 2022, 10:54 am

Flat6Labs, SANAD launch agritech accelerator in Egypt

Wamda

Press release:

Flat6labs, the region’s leading seed and early-stage venture capital firm, in collaboration with SANAD Entrepreneurship Academy, launched an agritech accelerator program to assist 10 to 12 startups in each cycle to improve their business models, product development, customer relationships, marketing plans, and financial management. The collaboration marks the beginning of Flat6Labs’ mission to support emerging businesses in the agri-food, food security, and rural development sectors while highlighting the value of the agritech industry in Egypt.

The agri-tech program will give startups access to capital, to grow faster and efficiently, encouraging the development of technologies that make the agriculture industry sustainable, safe, and environmentally friendly. These technologies optimize service quality in the agriculture industry, by facilitating data collection and analysis to quantify performances while limiting overprice of products/services.

‘’With digital transformation progressing rapidly across industries, and the agriculture industry being a core pillar of the Egyptian economy, the need to digitize the agriculture industry has increased dramatically. We are glad to launch this agritech accelerator program in collaboration with the SANAD Entrepreneurship Academy, as it will serve this need by supporting the startups that provide innovative technologies in the agriculture sector and will contribute to the sustainable growth of the Egyptian economy,” stated Hassan Mansi, Flat6Labs Head of Ecosystem Development Programs.

Empowering and promoting Egypt's Agri-digital sector would result in advancements in automated machinery and robotics, increasing the efficiency of agricultural productions by precisely locating nutrient availability, checking for diseases, predicting them, and many other useful facilities.

Kim Reichel, Chairperson of the SANAD Technical Assistance Facility Committee said, ”We are very much looking forward to our cooperation with Flat6Labs as they have shown a strong commitment to supporting innovative and technology-driven entrepreneurs across MENA. Together, we will create a positive impact by providing targeted support and enabling business owners to thrive. We believe that focusing on the agricultural sector, and specifically, agri-tech is vital in these challenging times and will contribute to increased food security across the region.” 

Flat6Labs Egypt and SANAD Entrepreneurship Academy will continue to support bright, passionate, and tech-driven entrepreneurs in Egypt, by providing funding, technical assistance, and networking opportunities across the country and beyond. The venture capital firm will continue to be a cornerstone of the digital transformation of the Egyptian economy building successful job-creating startups that contribute to the economic development in Egypt.

September 6th 2022, 10:54 am

SVC invests in Jordan's Propeller's second fund

Wamda

Source: Arab News

The Saudi Venture Capital Co. has invested in Jordan-based venture capital firm Propeller — which specializes in funding early stage software-as-a-service, enterprise software and cloud infrastructure startups.

The move comes within the company’s program to invest in funds and stimulating startups, especially in their early stages, Saudi Press Agency reported, citing CEO Nabeel Koshak.

He added that Saudi Arabia is witnessing unprecedented growth in the volume and quality of start-up deals.

This happens as a result of the emergence of many innovative entrepreneurs, VCs, and angel investor groups, in addition to the availability of a sophisticated regulatory and legislative environment. 

The value of the investment was not specified. 

Established in 2018, SVC is a government company that contributed to the development of the venture investment system by investing in 30 investment funds. 

September 6th 2022, 10:54 am

Egyptian car service app 3atlana closes Seed round

Wamda

Source: The Startup Scene

3atlana, an Egypt-based car service app, has raised a six-figure seed round from Ghabbour Auto, a leading automotive company in Egypt to strengthen their AI system.

Founded in 2020 by Sherif El Adham, Ahmed Hassan, and Amr Hesham, 3atlana aims to make essential car services easier, faster and more efficient by providing everything a driver may need, including scheduling maintenance, roadside assistance, and a connection to nearby service providers.

Through the 3atlana app, users will be able to access door-to-door services, where an engineer and mobile car centre will be sent to their location, and they will be able to purchase spare parts with a three-month guarantee. For those wishing to buy a used car, 3atlana can inspect the car through its resale car service, giving buyers the assurance they need before making their purchase.

“We are very proud to continue growing our company with support from one of the biggest automotive companies in Egypt,” Sherif El Adham, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at 3atlana, tells StartupScene. “This round of funding comes at an ideal time as we’re looking to further advance our technology, and continue expanding locally as well as regionally across the Middle East.”

The new funding will be used to strengthen the startup’s AI technology feature, which in turn would allow them to continue providing users with innovative car service solutions. To date, the app has been downloaded more than 25,000 times, and over 9,500 cars have been serviced by 3atlana.

Although it is a young startup, 3atlana has participated in several incubators and accelerator programmes such as Enpact Covid-19 Relief Program and Flat6Labs Cairo. Flat6Labs Cairo and Ghabbour Auto are also board partners with 3atlana.

September 5th 2022, 10:39 am

Egypt's el-dokan raises $550,000 pre-Seed round

Wamda

Press release 

el-dokan, the first-of-its-kind company to offer enterprise e-commerce technology, in MENA has announced that it successfully secured a $550,000 pre-Seed round, led by a cluster of local and regional investors including EFG EV and Flat6Labs, 500 Global and Hala Ventures.

E-commerce is now an integral part of every retailer’s business strategy, and technology builders and platforms are scrambling to provide retailers with the best technology to help them scale up and optimize their operations. Unlike companies like Shopify and other local shop builders in the region whose focus is to address the needs of smaller retailers, in its latest turn, el-dokan provides e-commerce APIs for large- and medium-sized retailers as well as startups, enabling them to build highly customized and personalized e-commerce stores. 

Launched in late 2020 in Egypt, el-dokan primarily targets large retailers and chain stores seeking to expand their e-commerce market share, increase sales and operation automation.

Utilizing "headless e-commerce technology, el-dokan offers the optimal technology infrastructure that allows tech teams to develop highly customizable e-commerce with maximum flexibility to help businesses respond faster to changing business needs and keep up with the rapid changes in e-commerce.

Besides retailers, it also targets software companies and developers that work directly with enterprises looking to build their e-commerce stores in fast and cost-efficient manner, with 300+ available API endpoints.

Commenting on the announcement, Ahmed Maher, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of el-dokan, said that the key reason behind the company's ability to earn the trust of investors and close its pre-Seed round is the fact that el-dokan is among the very select few companies that focus on building advanced software using cutting-edge technologies such as headless, composable e-commerce architecture.

"The majority of retailers have repeatedly shown the willingness to either replace the traditional e-commerce methods with more advanced and flexible technology. The technology pioneered by el-dokan 'changes the equation' by helping retailers drive sales growth while simultaneously bringing down maintenance costs, making it possible for our retailers to quickly and easily develop APIs connections with our partners to ensure the highest levels of operational efficiency. Our technology can easily integrate with any third-party providers like payments, shipping, point of sale (POS) and (ERP) systems," commented Mohamed Yousry, chief technology officer (CTO) and co-founder of el-dokan.

“After seeing the great impact el-dokan has had on enterprise businesses in MENA, and the profound growth we’ve experienced over a short period of time, we’re excited about the fact that our clients managed to achieve $45 million GMV after migrating from other global well-known software solutions that don’t meet the present-day challenges ours. We are now serving a global roster of clients such as Procter & Gamble (P&G), Misr Pharmacies, Mobily, Zahran stores and Apple Premium seller Switch Plus, along with grocery delivery app Appetito, among others. And this is a testament to the ability of regionally-based tech startups to develop leading-edge technologies trusted by large, international brands and compete with global counterparts," Yousry explained.

For his part, Walid Hassouna, CEO of valU, Egypt's leading buy now pay later (BNPL) platform expressed his excitement over the company's successful completion of its initial funding round which counts EFG EV among its earliest backers. "We are looking forward to exciting times ahead with el-dokan and its all-star team who are able to carve out a niche for themselves in the rapidly-evolving e-commerce market," said Hassouna.

 

September 5th 2022, 6:09 am

Carzami raises pre-Seed investment from Contact Financial Holding

Wamda

Press release:

Carzami, an online retailer for quality used cars and vehicle financing, today announced the close of a pre-seed round led by Contact Financial Holding, together with a scalable inventory financing facility, which it plans to use to transform Egypt’s used car market targeting $30 million in revenue by 2024. 

With this strategic investment from Contact, Egypt’s largest non-bank financial services provider, Carzami is positioned to launch its innovative model for a digital car dealership while being able to offer crucial vehicle financing and insurance options.

Carzami aims to fix the Egyptian used car market by providing consumers with an online platform offering certified and reconditioned used cars with 360-degree virtual tours and inspection reports. Customers can order any car they like to be delivered to their doorstep to test drive, and then purchase with financing and insurance options.

Carzami understands that the fragmentation and mistrust that characterizes the used car industry is unconducive for business growth. With the funding, Carzami seeks to continue growing its inventory. Along with that, Carzami is looking to expand its fleet of delivery haulers, enhance its operational technology, build a productive team, and build a modern reconditioning facility. Importantly, Carzami will utilize the funding in optimizing its organizational efficiency and building on the existing functions, such as vehicle financing.

Carzami hopes to gain an advantageous edge over its competitors by providing exceptional services and building on its consumer trust. This will be achieved by premiering the 30-day Carzami Protection Program and a 7-day “Test to Own” service where potential buyers can try out a vehicle for 7 days/200km to reach a conclusion. Ultimately, they can get a full refund or trade in with another. Here, Carzami aims to ensure that consumers get value for their money. Carzami seeks to become a pioneer in the used car industry by offering consumers top-of-the-line services. 

Hazem Moussa, Chairman of Contact Financial Holding, stated that “Our faith in digitizing the automotive market in Egypt has been with us from our early years, we launched contactcars.com in 2002 as the first car marketplace and community for both new and used cars. In addition, Contact pioneered financing of used cars over 10 years ago, now we believe we can support Carzami in its quest to re-invent the used car purchase experience”.

Said Zater, CEO of Contact Financial Holding added “Our support to Carzami comes as a part of our continuous effort to connect with the startup scene in all aspects we can complement their work with. We believe in the ongoing digitization of services led by exciting startups like Carzami”.

Co-founded in 2022 by Hussein Hosny and Adham Hosny; 2 seasoned entrepreneurs in the automotive space. They started this business venture to address the problems associated with buying and selling used cars. They define themselves as an online-based venture that helps clients to navigate the tedious process of buying and selling used cars. 

Carzami Founders, Hussein Hosny & Adham Hosny, commented, “We aim to change the way people buy and sell used cars by providing a seamless one-stop-shop platform that offers online buying, selling, and high-quality financing options. Our experience is all about trust and transparency, allowing consumers to overcome the hassle of traditional dealerships”.

Both Hussein and Adham boast extensive experience in the automotive space. The duo co-founded Sa3ar; Egypt’s first data pricing engine for used cars, in partnership with Synapse Analytics, which is now also a partner in Carzami. With additional team experience from BMW, Mercedes, and Porsche, Carzami is gearing to be an industry leader for car needs and requirements across the region.

September 5th 2022, 2:39 am

Can the Mena region be a leader in inclusive capital?

Wamda

Regie Mauricio is the research manager at the Legatum Centre for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT.

Dina H. Sherif is the executive director of the Legatum Centre for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT and a senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

In 2009, Yahoo acquired Maktoob, an Arabic-language online services company, for $175 million. For the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region at the time, this was a big deal. It ultimately became the deal that ended up seeding Souq, an Arabic-language e-commerce platform, which Amazon acquired for $650 million in 2017.

Souq's success has provided countless entrepreneurs a selling platform and inspired a spectrum of e-commerce competitors in the Mena region, such as Noon.com and Mumzworld. We share this story because Maktoob’s exit, which took place more than a decade ago, sparked a “Cambrian moment” of entrepreneurship and innovation that has continued to create value for people across the region today.

Another prime example of this is Careem, the Mena region's leading ride-hailing platform headquartered in Dubai. Since its founding in 2012, its former employees have founded over 84 companies, almost half of which were created after Careem’s $3.1 billion exit in 2019. Most of these companies operate in Mena, though a growing contingent also works in Pakistan, Germany, and the US. As with Maktoob, the overnight infusion of capital is already accelerating the region’s entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem. In fact, one of Careem’s former employees founded Swvl, a ride-hailing company that went public on the NASDAQ via a SPAC.

Moving on to Egypt, a consortium of investors acquired Fawry, an Egypt-based e-payment and financial services platform, for $100 million in 2015. The company is now the country’s first fintech company to be valued at $1 billion. In 2020, Mohamed Okasha, Fawry’s co-founder and former managing director, stepped down from his role and used the exit to found Disruptech, a $20 million fintech-focused fund in Egypt. The fund invested in three companies within its first month of establishment and is currently completing its seventh investment.

Some refer to these networks of ex-employees turned founders and investors as a “mafia” because they resemble an archetype: the “PayPal Mafia.” eBay acquired PayPal in 2002, and the exit made a handful of people very wealthy. The group of ex-PayPal employees has become infamous for giving rise to billionaires like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Max Levchin. The PayPal Mafia has become a core part of the Silicon Valley ecosystem. Its founders started new industries, created startup culture, and continue to fund some of the most profitable businesses in tech.

Halfway across the world, ex-unicorn employees are also defining the startup ecosystem in Mena. The question for us in the region is: how can we make sure we move beyond a “mafia,” which lends itself to exclusivity, to something that is truly inclusive?

When exits become working capital for new innovation

When eBay acquired PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion, hundreds of the company’s employees became overnight millionaires. Ex-PayPal employees went on to found YouTube, Yelp, and LinkedIn as well as some of Silicon Valley's most successful venture capital (VC) funds, including The Founders Fund, Clarium Capital, and Sequoia Capital.

Similarly, Yahoo’s acquisition of Maktoob in 2009 seeded the initial $5-6 million investment in Souq. As this new company grew into the preeminent e-commerce platform in the region, the merchants on Souq increased their sales from a few dozen products a week to turnover topping millions of dollars a year. Souq’s down-market impact continues to grow after its $650 million acquisition by Amazon, which aims to expand the retailer’s reach to merchants and customers across the region.

Careem’s $3.1 billion exit also created immense wealth for the company’s founders and employees. At the time of acquisition, all of the platform’s 4,000 employees held shares in the company. Overnight, Uber’s buyout made 200 employees UAE dirham millionaires and 75 USD millionaires. The sudden infusion of capital seeded the founding of 84 startups and a VC fund.

Maktoob, Souq, and Careem’s exits have built a base infrastructure for the Mena entrepreneurship ecosystem to grow for decades to come. Newer unicorns have been able to find funding and scale faster because of the networks built by these earlier deals — a value cycle that only continues to grow. 

When capital stays exclusive

Although PayPal employees went their separate ways professionally in the years following the acquisition, this group of colleagues continued to be one another's thought partners, guinea pigs, first investors, and peer mentors. The PayPal Mafia continued to exchange ideas and work together. Their partnerships are now at the core of many of Silicon Valley’s great success stories. For example, David Sacks, ex-COO of PayPal, made it a habit of investing in his former colleagues. He was one of the earliest investors in Elon Musk’s SpaceX and The Boring Company and held shares in Max Levchin’s Affirm and Peter Thiel’s Palantir. This group of innovators shared the ideas and capital that made them some of the most successful entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. This group, however, has remained exclusive at a time when inclusivity is needed most.

Ex-Careem employees also continue to be one another’s best asset. They are one another’s best resource for workshopping ideas, recruiting talent, and raising capital. Mohamed Aboulnaga, ex-regional director of Careem Egypt, took 10 ex-Careem team members with him when founding Halan, a ride-hailing app. Moreover, many of Careem's initial investors are intent on continuing to back Careem alumni.

Ecosystems mature as successful entrepreneurs continue to share ideas and innovate. The companies mentioned above have all built communities of support that have seeded ecosystems where they reside. In a Covid-19 world, the question remains — can we build ecosystems that are more resilient and that make systems that work for everyone and not just the few who had the privilege of being a part of a unicorn?

Marks of success and cautionary tales

The PayPal Mafia, although successful, serves as a cautionary tale for the Mena region as we begin to see similar trends emerge. The group has been criticised as an exclusive boy's club.

Though still in its early days, the communities emerging from companies like Souq and Careem are more inclusive than PayPal’s. Women hold influential positions in the region’s unicorns, and contemporary unicorns are much more concerned with the societal impact that their companies are having. Tackling issues of social and economic inequality is unavoidable for a company operating in the Arab region. Employees who have graduated from some of these leading companies in the region are founding businesses in affordable education, accessible health care, social commerce, and financial inclusion. These new innovations have the potential to contribute to more inclusive prosperity in the region.  

The Middle East can become a leader in building out more inclusive entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems through the following:

  1. New entrepreneurship pipelines: Unicorns should play a key role in creating the pipeline for entrepreneurs of all backgrounds to succeed. As ex-employees often become founders, enacting proactive hiring policies that source a diverse talent pool can mint a new generation of entrepreneurs that hail from a diversity of backgrounds that are rooted in solving the problems of communities often unrepresented by startup culture.
  2. Sharing knowledge: Successful entrepreneurship communities should not keep their expertise and experience locked up in their networks. In particular, they should extend their reach beyond urban centres and enable scalable problem-solving throughout the region. They can create programmes to build capacity and generate thought-leadership to advocate for supporting a more inclusive ecosystem of entrepreneurs.
  3. Inclusive capital: Investors should commit to funding companies outside of a handful of serial founders. These funds should source founders of all genders, races, and urban/rural backgrounds to spark entrepreneurship communities throughout the region and not just in a few mega-city epicentres. Exits can seed ecosystems, and risk capital can make sure that these exits do not make capital exclusive, but inclusive.

Mena has an opportunity. The region can seize the Cambrian moment that it is in to create an inclusive environment that accelerates value creation for all or begin locking up the doors and keeping its wealth in the hands of a few.

This article was originally published by the Middle East Institute

September 4th 2022, 10:32 pm

KarmSolar announces new minority stake round

Wamda

Press release:

KarmSolar, Egypt's leading private power utility and solar energy company, has initiated a round of capital increase to fund its local and regional expansion plans. US-based Synergy Consulting supports the new investment round as the sell-side advisor. The capital injection will support existing power generation and distribution businesses, as well as enable new business verticals such as solar water desalination solutions provider KarmWater, and electric mobility venture KarmCharge to flourish.

This comes in line with the evolution of the solar energy sector in Egypt, especially with KarmSolar’s long-term strategy to disrupt the existing utility business by developing a vertically integrated multi-utility platform with a specialization in solar power generation, as well as urban and regional power distribution.

Ahmed Zahran, CEO and co-founder of KarmSolar said: “Through the minority stake sale, we are seeking a new partner to join KarmSolar’s current shareholders and its strategic shareholder, EDF Renouvelables, in supporting the next stage of our journey. These are exciting times for the future of smart, connected utility platforms and we plan to be at the forefront of this paradigm shift in our region”.

Named by the Financial Times as one of the fastest growing companies in Egypt and 19th in Africa in 2022, KarmSolar has a strong presence across the energy value-chain from development, and generation until the distribution of power to consumers. Today the company holds a portfolio of 42 MW of secured and financed generation assets (of which 30 MW are operational) & 48 MVA of contracted distribution power capacity in the industrial, commercial, agricultural and tourism sectors (of which 12 MVA are operational).

Earlier this year, KarmSolar signed a 22 MW power distribution agreement with MARAKEZ, one of Egypt’s leading mixed-use real estate developers, for D5M, in its new mall in East Cairo. It also became the first private company to receive a permit to distribute electricity in the North Marsa Alam region by EgyptERA, signing agreements with eight resorts to join the Marsa Alam Solar grid.

September 4th 2022, 7:47 pm

Edtech Emonovo raises bridge round to grow its platform matching students with universities

Wamda

Press release 

Emonovo (formerly MARJ3), the MENA region’s leading Ed-tech platform, has successfully raised an undisclosed bridge round by strategic angel investors from US, Europe, and MENA and follow-on investment from Flat6Labs. 

Emonovo (Formerly MARJ3) is the MENA region’s leading Ed-tech platform that utilizes technology and data to match MENA youth to the best-fit majors and universities worldwide. The participating angel investors compile extensive working experience in giant companies like META, Klarna, Alan, as well as prominent VC and Private Funds while having distinguished backgrounds in EdTech, FinTech, HR, and investment sectors.

“Flat6Labs has been a firm believer in Emonovo’s team and platform from day one. This investment is a testament to our belief in Emonovo’s mission to empower students in the MENA region in their educational journey. We’re excited to see how the team will develop their platform even further and support more potential students towards fulfilling their educational ambitions in the best universities around the world,” said Dina El-Shenoufy, Chief Investment Officer of Flat6Labs.

“I am a firm believer in the power of education to transform people’s lives, and I’m super excited to be backing the team behind Emonovo,” said Willie Elamien, an angel investor.

This investment is aimed to boost the new brand strategy and fuel the growth of university onboarding & student recruitment through the platform. It will also be used to update the platform technology to optimize matching and data management.

“As a proponent of tech and social impact, I’m delighted to invest in Emonovo, the future of higher education in the region,” said Rama A. Chakaki, an angel investor.

Marj3 platform was founded by Abdo Samy, Sami Al-Ahmad, and Ahmed Elgebaly in July 2016 as a comprehensive database containing educational opportunities worldwide for Arab youth in a simplified way. In 2017, within less than a year after its establishment, the platform obtained pre-seed funding from Flat6Labs’ FAC Egypt Fund, which enabled them to grow and reach a far larger segment of the target audience in the Middle East, achieving more than two million monthly visitors on Marj3’s website.

In 2020, as they continued to grow, they managed to obtain a new investment round from a US-based investor (Expert Dojo), synchronizing with the launch of Marj3 education services to help students in the Arab region find the best suitable universities for them worldwide. Then, after a short period, Marj3 managed to secure partnerships with more than 300 universities globally in various fields.

In 2022, the 3 co-founders decided to support students fully from A to Z in their experience to follow their educational journey. They shifted from scholarships to university and student matching arena. In March 2022, Marj3 became Emonovo with some internal and external adjustments and new branding. 

“This strategic investment round is going to help us make Emonovo available to more students than ever before. Our mission is to help students achieve their educational dream, and I am super excited that our investors are aligned with us on making our unique solutions and technology experience available for everyone soon,” said Sami Al-Ahmad - CEO & Co-Founder at Emonovo.

 

September 4th 2022, 7:45 pm

Egypt’s Zeew raises $630,000 Seed

Wamda

The enterprise software as a service (SaaS) sector is one of the rising stars of the Egyptian startup ecosystem, with more companies scaling up and piquing investor interest. 

Egypt-based e-commerce SaaS startup Zeew, has raised a $630,000 Seed round from Plug and Play, Poland Prize and a group of angel investors, bringing the total funds it has raised in the past couple of years to $1 million.

Founded by Mohamed Ghaith in 2017, Zeew lets companies launch their on-demand delivery businesses, enabling them to track and control their operations through its customisable, hyperlocal SaaS solution. Currently, Zeew is present across 100 countries, with merchants in different verticals including logistics, food and grocery, restaurants, pharmacy, etc.

The startup plans to use the newly acquired funding to grow its team to serve more customers worldwide.  

 

September 4th 2022, 7:43 pm

eFlow: The Lebanese startup teaching courses on messenger

Wamda

Online learning became a necessity during the lockdowns, and while many tools became readily available, the vast majority catered to those with good internet connectivity and access to laptops and tablets. For many students in Lebanon, the political vacuum, devastated economy and crumbling infrastructure resulted in a lack of access to education.  

So Samer Bawab and Bassel Jalaleddine alongside another partner came together in March 2020 to launch eFlow, an Arabic online learning platform suited to mobile phones thanks to its interactive chatbot that is integrated with WhatsApp and Telegram. Through eFlow's platform, courses are converted into short videos, images, and voice notes, after which learners receive messages individually through the educational chatbot and are able to reply back with text, emojis, images, videos, or voice notes. The chatbot is able to analyse a learner’s response then reply accordingly by taking into account the lesson learning objectives, the learner’s learning style, and their emotions. Eflow has worked with several international NGOs, including UNICEF and UNHCR and now has 12,000 learners on its platform, with plans to branch into English, Spanish and French. It recently won the UN-backed World Summit Awards for inclusion and empowerment.

We spoke with Samer Bawab about eFlow’s journey.

How did the idea for your edtech come about?

eFlow started its journey working in Lebanon with schools and learners across the country who were facing tremendous challenges with significant power cuts, lack of electricity, low digital capacity, and essentially no access to computers or laptops. The Lebanese government had completely abandoned the educational system which left it up to the NGOs and private organisations to serve these communities of schools, teachers, and learners who were struggling. Covid-19 and lockdown aside, many teachers were relying heavily on WhatsApp and more specifically WhatsApp groups where they were sending lessons and materials.  

An organisation called Near East Foundation came to us to provide learners in marginalised communities with an online learning platform. So, we helped them build a specific tool that was essentially a chatbot to assist these learners as they were going through [course] materials online. We developed a web app and integrated it with WhatsApp and Facebook messenger. We saw very positive results.

We definitely believe there is still a big gap in the way high-quality education content is being delivered to communities around the world. Especially for those learners who are not as privileged or do not have the opportunities as their more fortunate classmates. Also, the platform can significantly save tremendous amounts of time and money for organisations that are sending field officers to gather information, as well as for teachers who are monitoring a large number of students across a big area or [across] multiple schools.

What were some of the difficulties that you faced during the early stages of eFlow’s conception?

As far as challenges go, we had a significant number of them. We were working during lockdown and the whole team was remote at the time [and] that was not an ideal environment. Here in Lebanon, we face a lot of challenges with connectivity and power. Having a connection and being able to work remotely and successfully doing client calls was a huge challenge we had to deal with and still do to this day. As a startup too, none of these organisations were familiar with our brand, so we struggled to get a few contracts signed at the beginning. However, our biggest contract was with UNICEF Lebanon, and we won a competition with them over WhatsApp. That was our big break that helped us secure a handful of contracts and other financial sponsors. Paying my team was also a quite hard, we were getting paid like $200/$300 a month. We weren't getting much money at the time, and it was quite tough to make ends meet until we could get some secure clients to pay us. 

[When] the pandemic was a bit under control with the roll out of vaccinations, we thought our progress would stall, however, what we saw was people’s interests to adopt the hybrid mode of learning. In the case of Lebanon, insurgents can block the roads and kids cannot go to school so having an online, hybrid mode of schooling becomes the solution. And I think eFlow has been very helpful in that regard. 

What are some of the mistakes that you wished you had not made during the establishment of eFlow? 

First off, the UNHCR project was huge. We knew we were getting into a big beast of a company when we were working with them, and I think the mistake we may have made was we didn't staff enough people and we didn't expect the project to be as big, especially as a startup with only 13 people or 12 people. So, for us it was really about being able to gauge the level of effort, when you have these big clients. I probably would've hired 10 more people before the start of that project instead of waiting for us to hit a brick wall. 

How is life as an entrepreneur in Lebanon today?

There’s a lot happening in Lebanon. The economy has crashed, the currency is devalued. And if you are looking to get a partner in the GCC, or even in the UK or in, in Europe or America, the clients are usually willing to pay less. They'll say, “we're going to pay you in dollars, but we're going to pay you half the amount because we know what's going on in the country right now and we want to mitigate the risks of any losses after investing. You should be glad we are making this investment in the first place because you are already struggling”. This makes it tougher for the entrepreneur who's trying to get a deal in a big project outside of Lebanon. There's this stigma now of Lebanon and people think they can take advantage of Lebanese resources that are coming out of the country because they're desperate. However, there's a lot of smart, hardworking entrepreneurs that are trying to make it so it creates this imbalance where investors think they can take advantage of Lebanese labour.

Have you noticed any changes in investment trends in edtech?

Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, my team and I have seen a significant uptick in investment trends focused on education technology, specifically due to the fact that many schools, learning centres and universities around the world shut down completely. This created a high demand in the market for full remote learning management systems, chatbots, and other mobile learning platforms as these educational organisations needed to find effective ways to support their teachers and students. This fuelled a big wave of funding from VCs and investors from all around the world who were seeking to generate profits from this unusual time in the world. 

Even now in 2022, as we return slowly back to normal around the world, there is still high interest for technology solutions that can be utilised in hybrid learning models and to further enhance the learning experience. Furthermore, the investments we are seeing now are going to solutions and services companies that have a large user base, and that are creating impact and value for those users even after the lockdowns. 

September 4th 2022, 7:43 pm

Stake raises $8 million pre-Series A round

Wamda

Press release:

Dubai-based digital real estate investment platform, Stake, secured over $8 million in an oversubscribed pre-Series A funding round. This follows a $4 million Seed round the company closed back in June 2021, bringing their total raised funds to over $12 million.

Backed by some of the region’s leading venture capital investors, MEVP and BY Ventures, and participation from returning investors Vivium Holding and Combined Growth Real Estate, the funding marks the largest capital raise by a real estate investment platform in the MENA region.

With a base of 42,000 users from over 80 countries and 150 nationalities, Stake plans to invest this new capital in advancing its product and technology, upscaling its brand, and expanding operations within the region with the vision of enabling a borderless, liquid, and accessible market for quality real estate investments.

The company expects to continue fueling growth in the platform as regional investors flock to real estate for stability in today’s volatile global markets. This has led Stake to register an average 17% monthly growth rate in both investors and Assets Under Management (AUM), and 500% overall growth in AUMs in the past 12 months alone.

Rami Tabbara, Manar Mahmassani, and Ricardo Brizido, co-founders of Stake commented: “Investors in the region and beyond deserve a more transparent, digital-friendly means of investing in real estate. This round is a testament to our mission at Stake to bring access and liquidity to the oldest, largest, and most sought-after asset class in the world. The proceeds will allow us to continue attracting the best talent to the team and cement Stake’s position as the category leader in the MENA region.”

The region’s real estate surge has motivated Stake to enter two more markets by Q1 2023: Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The startup aims to direct the Kingdom’s proactive investors and encourage young Egyptians to tap into the rapidly growing asset class created in their domestic markets.  

Currently, at 30+ team members, Stake is gearing towards recruiting new talent and doubling the team size in its expansion markets. The startup will provide investors with more liquidity and democratize the real estate asset class, as the region calls for a better real estate investment journey for its population of over 400 million, saving upwards of US$500 billion a year.

Riyad Abou Jaoudeh, Partner at MEVP says, "We believe that the future of property investment is digital, fractional, and hassle-free. The team at Stake has enabled thousands to become real estate investors and we are excited to partner with them as they scale in MENA.”

Despite global tensions and rising inflation concerns in the region, UAE’s real estate market continues to thrive, with Q2 2022 witnessing the highest quarterly volume of sales and 22.5K+ transactions taking place, valued at US$16.1 billion. As such, the real estate industry emerges as one of the top five sub-sectors by deal value in the Middle East, ranked alongside consumer products, banking and capital markets, asset management, and transportation.

Abdallah Yafi, Founder and Managing Partner at BY Ventures added, “We are delighted to welcome Stake to the BY portfolio and to be partnering with such an incredible team led by Rami, Manar and Ricardo in their mission-driven journey to build the go-to platform for fractional real estate investing in MENA. We’re proud of their early success in the UAE and excited about the potential in the wider MENA region. We strongly believe in the execution capabilities of the Stake team and their ability to build a dominant business while focusing on delivering profitable growth.”

Stake has grown from strength to strength since launching the Middle East’s first mobile application for fractional real estate investing in March 2022. On a mission to empower everyone to own and build wealth through real estate, Stake aims to multiply its active investor base tenfold, becoming the category leader in KSA and UAE.

Elie Khouri, Founder of Vivium Holding, further commented, "We believe that property investment stands at the core of any wealth-building strategy and we continue to stand behind Stake as they are democratizing real estate ownership across the region.”

September 4th 2022, 7:43 pm

Why is Grubtech shifting its focus to Egypt?

Wamda

The foodtech space remains one of the most dynamic in the Middle East, thanks to the region’s insatiable appetite for food delivery and eating out. Last year, foodtech startups across Mena raised over $896 million, about 28 per cent of the $3.17 billion raised in total. These startups ranged from cloud kitchens and food ordering platforms to POS systems.

While diners have embraced eating out since the end of lockdowns, food delivery has not waned. This has sparked demand for all-in-one software solutions from restaurant operators, to allow for quick updates based on the business' changing needs.

One startup offering such a solution is Grubtech, founded by Mohamed Al Fayed, Mohamed Hamedi and Omar Rifai, in 2019 as cloud kitchens were beginning to take hold in the UAE in particular. Grubtech’s solution focuses solely on fulfilling the needs of delivery-oriented virtual and hybrid restaurants, offering a full suite of end-to-end services such as software, third party integration and payment solutions. The technology offered by Grubtech cuts across several touchpoints in the supply chain, helping restaurant owners better manage their inventory, reduce wastage and increase labour utilisation. It claims that its solution helps expedite the order delivery cycle by 25 per cent, saving its clients up to 15 per cent of their gross payroll.

Grubtech currently serves customers in 18 countries across different regions, with the GCC being its biggest market. Earlier in May, the company expanded to Egypt, and relocated its entire back office functions to Cairo to serve its clients from all over the world. This came a year after it raised a $13 million Seed round.

"We had tremendous success in Pakistan, a country that operates very much like the Egyptian market. We're taking this knowledge, packaging it and localising it to the local market. We have a dedicated team that educates the restaurant community from [a] technology perspective and we work constantly on pricing and bundling our product in a way that makes it attractive for the restaurants to adopt," says Al Fayed.

But it is not just the market opportunity in Egypt that has driven Grubtech’s pivot to the country. The main reason is gaining access to a wider pool of talent.

“[Egypt] boasts abundant yet affordable talent, which can otherwise be difficult to find in the GCC, especially amid the current push towards nationalisation of the workforce adopted by governments across the region," says Osama Harfoush, country manager at Grubtech 

Grubtech is the second regionally-based restaurant-focused SaaS startup to expand to Egypt after Saudi Arabia-based Foodics, which announced its foray into the Egyptian market back in 2020.

Online versus offline food delivery 

Given the majority of food delivery orders in Egypt are placed through offline channels, the potential of e-commerce in the food delivery market remains largely untapped. Riding on the opportunity, Grubtech looks to win over restaurants seeking to expand their delivery footprint as well as bring about the parity between online and offline delivery.

"Around 80 per cent of the food consumed in Egypt is coming from deliveries placed offline. [We] firmly believe that consumer behaviour is going to change and shift to digital versus analogue, as it happens in a large market like Egypt where we estimate our addressable market is more than 40,000 restaurants," says Al Fayed.

Our initial stages of discovery showed that the large restaurants that we are targeting are using a very archaic technology, which causes a dent in their entire operations. The large multi-channel brands have exasperated challenges because they use central kitchens and stores for deliveries. We have a full team that trains the restaurants on not just the technology, but how to use the technology effectively in their operations," he further adds.

The offline-to-online conversion rates have been on an upwards trend thanks to a surge in popularity and use of food aggregators and a rise in digital payments options.

Despite being a "winner takes it all'' market, the food delivery sector has long been on the radar of global players. Turkey-based q-commerce and courier services provider Getir and UK-based online delivery platform Deliveroo, had reportedly made plans to enter the Egyptian market, but these plans were shelved due to the ongoing economic crisis, perhaps indefinitely.

"[Food aggregators] are going to educate and improve the customer experience on the mobile digital channel to shift from calling the number of the restaurant to order and placing it directly on the application. Sometimes, brands are not willing to collaborate with food aggregators and lean on third-party logistics for delivery. We help them do that through our automated solution. In general, local brands are increasingly becoming aware of the significance of having a robust digital presence, " Harfoush elucidates.

While the demand is mostly seen in the big cities of Cairo and Alexanderia, the online food delivery services are increasingly taking hold in the smaller cities of Egypt. From there, the cloud kitchens serve a huge role in enabling restaurant owners to roll out into new geographies without incurring the hefty expenses of setup. 

The change in consumer behaviour and the brand owners' growing need to switch to more digital ways of communications are key factors facilitating Grubtech’s smooth market entry.

"The cloud kitchens segment is gaining ground among local brands, and it is growing at least at a convincing pace. Unlike in the past, the market now boasts a handful of cloud kitchen operators, owing to the obvious pumped up demand for delivery services," Harfoush adds.

September 4th 2022, 7:43 pm

CarLogik raises $272,000 pre-Seed round

Wamda

Press release:

Dubai-based autotech startup, CarLogik, has raised AED 1 million in a Pre-Seed round funded by angel investors. Founded by Ali Omari and Wael Sasso and launched in March 2022, the start-up is on a mission to simplify and streamline the aftermarket auto service industry. The team will use the newly acquired funding to expand the startup’s footprint throughout the UAE, enhance its product line-up, and utilize data-driven marketing to grow its customer base.

CarLogik.com is an auto repair and service marketplace serving both sides of the industry - car owners and auto repair workshops. As it stands, the aftermarket auto service industry, is traditional, analogue and suffers from a ‘bad reputation in terms of trust, pricing and transparency. The common problem faced by a lot of out-of-warranty car owners is the struggle to find an agency alternative service provider that is trustworthy, convenient and reasonably priced. CarLogik closes this trust gap, by being a customer-centric online booking marketplace empowering car owners to take control of their car-related maintenance and repair needs in a hassle-free way.

The start-up gives customers the ability to book services or repairs with top-rated workshops through a simplified online process. Once a customer enters their car details and selects the needed services, the platform will indicate the exact checks and parts required, based on the vehicle manufacturer's recommendations, and propose a list of workshops organized by live prices, specializations, availabilities, and ratings.  As for the workshops, the platform is a digital solution offering online visibility to promote their services, allows them to utilize a booking and scheduling system, approve new jobs, issue quotations and accept digital payments.

When asked “What drives the company?”, the team stressed their desire to build a solution that, leveraging innovations, empowers customers to effectively shop and book a car service, as they would shop for their next meal on Deliveroo. While at the same time improving workshops’ economics. A win-win solution for both sides of the marketplace.

At this stage of the startup’s growth, the team is working toward educating customers and changing their perceptions of how the auto repair industry operates while establishing a trustworthy brand name in the UAE.

September 4th 2022, 7:43 pm

Talpods: Mentoring a new generation of software engineers

Wamda

Ask any entrepreneur what the most important element is to their survival and success and the answer almost always will be ‘talent’. 

Hiring the right team is crucial, not only to build the products and services, but to build the business too. Commonly among tech-led startups, it is the technology itself that is the product and so hiring the right software engineers to build the technology is essential. 

But software engineers are scarce in many parts of the region. A recent report published by The Institution of Engineering and Technology highlighted the lack of engineers in the UAE, while the quality of new recruits is also lacking, with 58 per cent of large companies saying they are struggling to find applicants with the right technical skills. 

Most startups based in the GCC turn to Egypt, Jordan, Eastern Europe or Asia to recruit software engineers, but hiring remotely carries with it its own set of challenges and risks. 

This dearth of talent encouraged Ameer Jawad and Lijeesh Majeed to co-found Talpods in January 2021 at a time when investment in the region’s startups was on the rise. 

“We noticed the shortage in high quality tech talent became more of a problem during the height of the pandemic. The right way to solve a supply shortage problem is to introduce new supply so we invest in young engineers and make them immediately effective,” says Jawad. 

Talpods initially started as an online bootcamp which lasted three months, targeting young graduates with a strong foundation in data structures and algorithms.

"What we are doing is finding those rough diamonds, carefully polishing them and then hand-holding them into tech roles with VC-backed startups in the region. With intense mentoring and support, we are able to turn these young people into highly productive engineers.”

While demand for such talent has always been high, Jawad claims that the need is now “exploding” given the rapid growth of the region’s startup sector over the past couple of years. It can take months to recruit a software engineer, with good talent commonly poached by startups with larger pockets. 

"’People’ is the fuel of startups, yet our tech scene is growing faster than the availability of talent,” he explains. "We're betting our money on the young and creative minds and we're nurturing them in order to continue fueling that exciting growth".

Talpods developed its model from a bootcamp to one that includes a mentorship scheme, pairing a full time junior engineer who has undergone the three-month training, with a “Talpod lead”, an experienced engineer with a minimum of eight years experience. This phase of the Talpod journey lasts 12-18 months, which enhances the execution of the junior engineer to mid and senior level standards.

"These mentors are senior and lead engineers who are experts in their tech stack, and they also have a passion for nurturing the next generation of world class engineers," says Jawad. "They roll up their sleeves and show them the ropes, indulging in pair programming and code reviews, helping them to navigate complex problems and execute with speed and quality, and they mentor them through office-place challenges like dealing with pressure and stakeholder management."

To date, Talpods has worked with several startups in the region, who pay a monthly fee to host these junior engineers. Among its clients is Kuwait-based online flowers and gifting platform Floward, whose chief technology officer, Diyaa Hamza, claims the service saves both time and effort when it comes to training new engineers. 

"One of our main challenges was hiring and investing in junior engineers because that will require a lot of time and dedication from our senior engineers to help guide them, which will lead to a major slowdown in our roadmap execution. Something we can’t afford to do,” says Hamza.  

Startups, particularly those in the growth stages, require tech talent with the ability to keep up with the pace of change. 

"Startups, because of their fast growth nature, usually come with complex legacy code, probably with little to no documentation, all the while still moving at an incredible pace. That level of speed and engineering is a tough environment for inexperienced talent to work in without substantial support, and they will struggle to cope with the pressure or make an impact without weighing the team down," says Jawad.

Another challenge facing the majority of startups, particularly those based in the GCC, is the cost of tech talent. The salary of a good engineer with three to five years experience will on average be Dh25,000 in the UAE, whereas an engineer with the same level of experience and talent in North Africa will cost Dh10-15,000 per month. Talpods typically trains engineers in Egypt and Lebanon, providing the startups who hire them well-trained and vetted talent. 

"It’s a sustainable social impact model where everyone wins. Right now we're creating prosperous tech careers for talent in Egypt and Lebanon, and we want to propagate this opportunity across other developing communities. They pay nothing to enter the programme because we want to make it totally accessible for them, and once they're placed they earn at the top bracket of what they expect in their home country."

Talpods-trained engineers are typically paid a $750 monthly salary during their mentorship phase. After completing their training, their salary could double according to Jawad.

"Our vision is for our region to be a self-sufficient tech hub, one with its own pool of high quality talent who are home-grown and a stronger fit culturally than traditional outsourcing routes in foreign tech hubs. Our young population here offers us an abundant source of ambitious talent who have the potential to fill that gap, and we’re playing the role of turning that potential into a reality," he adds. 

What makes a successful engineer?

Good engineers have a strong technical foundation alongside soft skills, but according to Jawad, exceptional engineers embrace the following principles:

1 - Growth mindset - it’s a certain kind of talent who are hungry for challenges and persevere in the face of hardship. Their success is the result of learning from many failures, and they embrace feedback and criticism as an opportunity for learning and growth.

2 - Ownership - great engineers own the role they take on - they take ownership not only of their individual role, but they are mission-aligned and take accountability in the collective goal that their organisation wants to achieve. 

3 - Agile thinking - a firm belief in industry values and best practices such as Design Thinking and Extreme Programming that result in the more efficient mode of delivery, maximising productivity and minimising errors."

September 4th 2022, 7:43 pm

Egypt’s mental health startup Shezlong expands to South Africa

Wamda

Press release 

As part of its strategic expansion plan abroad, the Egyptian startup Shezlong, the first and largest psychotherapy platform in the MENA region, announced the launch of its business in South Africa under the name of “Upright”.

Due to the mental health crisis in South Africa, Shezlong felt it was its duty to step up and provide them with the help they need. Shezlong chose this country specifically as a lot of research called attention to its need for mental healthcare services and more specifically, e-mental healthcare.

Expanding to South Africa would help reach marginalized populations who are underserved by the health system and are suffering from various mental health issues that are significantly affecting their quality of life.

The people of South Africa are exposed to various incidents that affect their mental health significantly such as a high rate of gender-based violence, lack of adequate care during pregnancy and unemployment, among many other factors.

Shezlong constructed a dedicated website and application with the brand identity of Upright. This is just a stepping stone to its larger goal, which is to make mental healthcare available and accessible to each person on this planet as everyone deserves to have the best quality of life possible.

Shezlong believes in its mission, and surely, it will achieve it one day. it truly believes in the necessity of mental healthcare, which is why they are starting with the most underserved population and countries.

“We are proceeding according to a clear strategy and a firm vision towards expansion and growth. We are aiming to make mental wellness a daily routine for every individual in Africa to help build resilient communities, hence, induce a positive impact on the welfare of the society through innovative, accessible and easy to use technologies. ” Mohamed Alaa the CEO of Shezlong said.

 

 

September 4th 2022, 7:43 pm

Aramco’s Wa’ed Ventures co-invests €13 million Series A round in OQ Technology

Wamda

Press release:

OQ Technology, a global 5G IoT (Internet of Things) satellite operator, has closed a €13 million Series A funding round led by Wa’ed Ventures, the venture capital arm of Aramco, and Phaistos Investment Fund, managed by 5G Ventures in Greece.

OQ Technology will use the funds to grow its 5G IoT satellite constellation, further develop its proprietary technologies and acquire more licenses. OQ’s technology enables applications requiring fast and real-time data processing in remote and rural areas via small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO). 

Earlier this year, OQ Technology launched its third satellite mission, Tiger-3, aboard the SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare mission Transporter-4. The company has more planned satellites that will be launched soon to further grow its constellation. 

“Against a challenging economic backdrop, our decision to seek funding was rewarded with a raise that will help us achieve our immediate goals in terms of growth, expansion into the Middle East, Africa, Asia, South America, and Oceania, increasing our spectrum licenses and patents portfolio, and further our product development,” said Omar Qaise, founder and CEO of OQ Technology.

“We have pioneered satellite-based 5G communications with the world’s first universal IoT device that can provide connectivity using satellite in low Earth orbit (LEO) and other patented technologies.  Since 2019, we had many successful missions with more in the pipeline, and we had successful service demos with Global Fortune 500 companies. This investment is a testament to the strength of our business plans, capabilities, and technology that OQ has been implementing since its inception, and a clear differentiator from many other satellite IoT companies.” 

Fahad Alidi, Managing Director and CEO at Wa’ed Ventures has commented; “Our investment in OQ Technology, a global pioneer in satellite technology, is the true manifestation of our mission to position the Kingdom as the centre of gravity for global tech ventures.” He added, “we envision OQ to become the nucleus to building a full spacetech ecosystem that starts with the Kingdom and outspreads to the surrounding region.” 

5G Ventures CEO Antonis Tzortzakakis said: "We consider there is great potential for 5G IoT technology, and we are very excited to invest in OQ Technology, together with Aramco's Wa'ed Ventures. The investment fits perfectly in 5G Ventures' strategy for supporting innovative 5G-related technologies that are capable of creating value and contributing to the evolution of an ecosystem of innovation in Greece," 

As part of OQ’s expansion strategy, OQ Technology is in the process of establishing two global subsidiaries, one in Saudi Arabia, the first of its kind in the Kingdom and the only 5G space network operations centre in the MENA region, and one in Greece under the name ‘OQ Technology Hellas’. 

The Saudi subsidiary, headquartered in Al Khobar, will host one of the largest data and network operations centres in the Middle East for 5G satellite services and will pioneer many of the business engagements with large oil and gas companies in the region. The centre will develop new products to engage with the local industrial ecosystem and universities in line with Saudi Arabia’s space initiatives as part of Vision 2030. 

According to GSMA Intelligence report published this year, the global direct-to-satellite (D2D) market is growing at a fast rate with 3GPP standardized technology offering access to new revenue for telcos, which will be worth over $30 billion by 2035.

September 4th 2022, 7:43 pm

Bahrain’s Faceki raises undisclosed Seed round from Tenmou

Wamda

Source: Startup MGZN

Tenmou, Bahrain’s first Business Angels Company, which provides both mentorship and capital to high-potential, innovative Bahraini entrepreneurs from the seed stage, announced its investment in Faceki.

Faceki is a Bahraini startup specialising in AI-powered Digital Identity Verification, Know-Your-Customer (KYC), Digital onboarding and Biometric Facial Authentication. Serving customers from more than 110 countries worldwide. Focusing on simplifying users’ journeys and fighting fraud to create safer, more accessible user experiences. 

The platform uses AI and machine learning to power its certified liveness and anti-spoofing detection technology which help verify if the users really are who they claim to be. Protecting customers and enterprises, and reducing onboarding process time and cost by up to 95%.

Tenmou emphasises the support and mentoring provided by its Angel shareholders, all of whom are established businessmen and successful entrepreneurs, whereas it has invested in 27 startups and created over $100 million in follow-on funding.

The company stresses that the aim of this investment is to support Bahrain’s goal to be the leading digital economy in the region.

Commenting on this occasion, Tenmou CEO Mr Nawaf Al Kooheji, said: “We’re very proud in investing in local AI platform that allows many other startups and even government entities to stop relying on different devices to provide biometric solutions to customers.”

“Faceki unifies user experience cross-devices and cross-platform capabilities. It ensures a smooth user experience over the board. We in Tenmou, encourage all AI startups which follow Bahrain’s plans for digital transformation, regulatory framework, and digital infrastructure development.”

He noted that Bahrain has created a digital ecosystem that makes business more efficient and competitive, with the essential support for a smooth digital transformation at the national level.

Mr Al Kooheji pointed out the Kingdom ranked 4th in the Arab digital economy report 2020 and ranked 3rd among Arab states and 40th globally in the 2021 “Heritage” index of economic freedom and it is now the leading country in the region in financial technology fintech.

“We aspire to provide a more convenient and frictionless verification solution to help make customer onboarding experience simple, safe and more secure.” Said Hamza Al-Ghatam, Co-founder and CEO of FACEKI. “We are delighted to have Tenmou as an investor and a partner, with the aim to help us accelerate technology innovation, and reach new markets globally.”

It is worth noting that Faceki has won Globee Excellence Award for Artificial Intelligence Award in Security this year.

August 7th 2022, 7:33 am

Procurified raises $1.1 million Seed funding

Wamda

Press release:

Dubai-based construction bid management platform Procurified has raised $ 1.1 million for its Seed Round. The Round was led by DIFC-based Aditum Investment Management, with participation from US-based Signal Peak Ventures, Al Hathboor Group, Empede Capital and strategic Angels. 

“We are thrilled to partner with the great team at Procurified. Rupert and Marc are solving a very challenging problem in a big market. The Founders’ insight into these challenges is reflected in their product design and business model with a hyper-focus on reducing friction for customers to adopt and a very short ‘time to value’ from adoption,” Lachlan Hughes of Aditum commented.

Procurified connects Buyers to their vendors to automate a very manual excel and PDF-reliant process of project bidding. “We are delighted to have closed our seed round with really great Investors. Our priority now is to establish an awesome team so we are hiring for key roles in product, engineering and sales. We are excited about our ambitious growth trajectory, with our Series A Round in the next 12-18 months,” said Rupert Tait, co-founder. 

August 6th 2022, 3:31 pm

Mena startups raised $105 million in July, lowest amount so far in 2022

Wamda

Startups in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) raised $105 million across 44 deals in July 2022, marking a significant slowdown in investments so far this year. In terms of investment value, this is a drop of 84 per cent year-on-year and a 68 per cent drop month-on-month. Even without Kitopi’s record-breaking $415 million Series C round announced in July last year, the amount raised last month fell by more than 50 per cent. 

The number of deals fell by almost a third when compared to June  and has halved when compared to July 2021. Investment announcements typically fall during the summer months, but it seems like this slowdown is reflective of wider global trends that have impacted investor sentiment. Investment in startups worldwide fell by 23 per cent in the second quarter this year, according to CB Insights due to growing economic uncertainty and a decline in tech stocks. 

Most of the investment in July was concentrated in the fintech sector thanks to UAE-based Yap’s $41 million growth round. This one deal accounted for more than half of the amount raised in the UAE alone. 

Saudi Arabia, which to date has seen investment in its startup rise steadily, saw a 55 per cent drop in investment value in July when compared to June 2022, while investments in UAE startups dropped 73 per cent. 

Egypt was the only country that saw its investments rise, with a 72 per cent increase in investment value thanks mainly to Cartona’s $12 million Series A round. 

Activity in Lebanon also picked up, due to the Energy Innovation Hub’s accelerator programme which saw 13 startups receive a grant of $12,000 each, most of them in the cleantech and sustainability sectors. Yap’s large round propelled fintech to the top of the rankings in terms of investment value with $53 million raised across eight deals. 

Just 12 of the startups that raised investment in July attracted foreign investment, of which US investors participated in eight of the deals. Regionally, Lebanon’s Innovation Hub was the most active investor in terms of number of deals, followed by UAE investors with 11 deals and then Saudi Arabia-based investors who participated in eight deals.  

Female-founded startups raised just 0.1 per cent of the $105 million, the lowest so far this year, while startups founded by men raised $95 million, or just under 91 per cent. Startups with both male and female co-founders raised $9.6 million, or 9 per cent of the total. 

Last month, six startups did not disclose the amount they raised. They include Lun Startup Studio, Modesta, Orisdi, Paymee, Sol, Stllr Network. We have assigned them a conservative amount of $100,000 each. 

These monthly reports are a collaboration between Wamda and Digital Digest.

August 6th 2022, 3:31 pm

Barakah raises $300,000 pre-Seed round

Wamda

Press release:

The KSA-based food delivery startup Barakah has secured $300,000 in a pre-Seed round from Alriyadah Investments. Alriyadah Investments is a family-owned closed real estate and energy development fund headquartered in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Barakah aims to harness digital innovation and social awareness to tackle food waste in restaurants, bakeries, hotels and groceries by offering a green discount on their surplus goods through an innovative mobile app in real time. It aims to help businesses drive profit and empowers them and their consumers to join the global movement against food waste.

The company shared that their motivation for starting Barakah was centred around sustainability and tackling the global and systemic issue of food waste in their own backyard. 40% of all food is wasted, in monetary terms, this amounts to $1.2 trillion globally and SAR 40 billion in Saudi, representing 10% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. The Islamic teachings were another major influence on the initiative, as they instilled the importance of preserving food. The word "Barakah" means blessing in Arabic.

Barakah wants to utilise technology to address a significant socio-economic issue where there is a clear gap in the market. That gap is creating the first discounted surplus marketplace in Saudi Arabia. The startup targets both businesses and consumers - for businesses they work with restaurants, bakeries, cafes, hotels, buffets, and grocery stores to put their surplus on the map. Generating an untapped source of revenue for our vendors. For consumers, the app appeals to value discerning and eco-conscious customers. 

The app introduces a real-time surplus management platform for businesses in the food service industry. Restaurants list their unsold meals on Barakah’s surplus marketplace where consumers can easily explore the map and find nearby discounted meals from their favourite shops, saving these items from going to waste.

August 3rd 2022, 3:46 pm

BNPL Tabby secures $150 million credit facility

Wamda

Press release:

Tabby, MENA’s leading payments and shopping app, has secured $150 million in debt financing from Atalaya Capital Management and existing investor Partners for Growth (PFG). 

Headquartered in New York, this facility marks Atalaya Capital Management’s first deal in the MENA region. In addition, San Francisco Bay Area-based Partners for Growth (PFG), have upsized their initial $50M commitment under the new facility. In aggregate, this represents the largest credit facility ever secured by a fintech in the GCC. Following Tabby’s Series B extension earlier this year, Tabby’s total capital raised to date amounts to $275 million.

The investment fortifies Tabby’s balance sheet and supports its sustained growth in transaction volumes and product expansion. In the last few months, major brands like H&M, Bath & Body Works, Nike, Swarovski and more have chosen Tabby as their payments partner. Tabby will continue to provide MENA’s consumers with access to credit otherwise unavailable to them, without charging any interest or other fees.

In May, Tabby announced the launch of Tabby Card, a first-of-its-kind solution in MENA tapping into 90% of the retail opportunity that happens offline.

The BNPL environment in MENA

MENA’s market dynamics make BNPL highly more relevant compared to developed markets where players continue to face challenges. In Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s largest economy, less than 20% of the population has a credit card in comparison to over 70% of the population in the United States. The limited access to credit solutions in the Kingdom makes Tabby a much-needed solution for consumers to add more flexibility and control over their finances.  

Tabby has grown 10x in revenue, 8x in active customers and 3x in active retailer partners in the first half of 2022, compared to the same period last year. Tabby continues to operate with superior economics driven by controlled risk in a market where access to credit is scarce and consumers cannot easily overextend themselves.

Hosam Arab, CEO and Co-Founder of Tabby, said: “Debt commitments from two reputable institutions is the validation of our strong track record and business model. As we near profitability, we’re in the fortunate position of not having to raise equity under the current market conditions and as such are thrilled to partner with the like-minded people at PFG and Atalaya.”

Justin Burns, Managing Director of Atalaya Capital, said: “Atalaya is excited to partner with Tabby in its mission to expand access to credit and payments in markets where there are limited existing options.”

Max Penel, Co-Head of Global Fintech at PFG, said: “We continue to be impressed by Tabby’s ongoing rapid growth whilst materially improving its' unit economics and PFG is excited to continue to support Tabby through an upsize of our existing facility."

August 3rd 2022, 6:34 am

SWVL suspends $100 million acquisition of UK’s Zeelo

Wamda

 

Dubai-headquartered transport and mobility solutions provider SWVL, has canceled the proposed acquisition of Zeelo, a UK-based B2B smart buses operator. The deal dates back to April this year and was worth $100 million.

The company said in a statement issued on Friday that the decision came as a response to the current turmoil in the global financial markets. It also added that it previously invested a total of $5,000,000 in the said startup.

Excluding Zeelo, SWVL also acquired five global startups.The latest addition to its buying spree was Mexico-based mass mobility startup Urbvan.

Earlier in May, the Nasdaq-listed company sacked 30 per cent of its employees, as part of its plans to achieve profitability in 2023. A month later, it halted its operations in Kenya and Pakistan as well as suspended a number of routes in its home market of Egypt.

August 1st 2022, 11:56 am

All Over Group’s Khaled Al Refaai acquires 25 pre cent of Blockat for $3.6 million

Wamda

Source: Waya

All Over Group has announced that its CEO, Khaled Al Rafaai, has acquired 25% of Blockat, Kuwait’s e-commerce platform.

The deal, which accounted for $1.12m Kuwaiti dinars equivalent to $3.6m US dollars, also includes plans to list the platform on the stock exchange.

It is worth mentioning that All Over Group is a Kuwaiti media production company, while Blockat is an e-commerce platform focusing on products for kids and teenagers in specific.

“This strategic partnership between Blockat and All Over Group is considered the start of a new era for integrating E-commerce and the content industry with artistic production and advertising, with the aim of creating a unique case of artistic creativity that reflects the rapid spread and expansion of the customer base in the region.” commented Blockat via Linkedin.

 

August 1st 2022, 11:26 am

Homzmart raises $23 million pre-Series B round

Wamda

Source: Reuters

Furniture and home goods e-commerce platform Homzmart has closed one of the past year's biggest funding rounds for a Middle Eastern and North Africa start-up, raising $23 million, its chief executive said.

The company, launched in 2020, will use the new funding to expand services, especially logistics, and fill gaps that appear in supply chains, co-founder and CEO Mahmoud Ibrahim said in an interview with Reuters.

The latest pre series B round funding round, which included participation from Riyadh-based technology venture capital fund STV, Impact46, Outliers Ventures, Rise Capital and NUWA Capital, brings its total funding to about $40 million.

It raised $15 million in an earlier round that closed in the second quarter of last year, after an initial round in which it raised about $2.5 million.

Homzmart started by connecting brands and manufacturers with customers in the Arab world's most populous country. But it found gaps in supply chains that prompted it to create a logistics arm, and now has about 100 trucks.

It also in March acquired Berlin-based home interior design firm MockUp Studio, which uses artificial intelligence to make designs.

Earlier this year the company's activities expanded to Saudi Arabia, and Ibrahim said it had achieved solid growth there. "The percentage of activity in the Kingdom is now between 25% and 30% of the total volume of Homzmart business," he said in the interview on Sunday.

The company says it serves 25 million houses in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, with more than 150,000 products on the platform.

Homzmart has not yet achieved profitability but Ibrahim said it is still focused on expansion and building market share "through lazer-focused profitability milestones".

August 1st 2022, 9:41 am

Kuwait’s Teeela raises $3.75 million pre-Series A

Wamda

Press release:

Teeela, an innovative and rapidly-scaling gifting platform and app has raised $3.75 million in a pre-Series A. The round was led by Saudi Arabian investment firm Wealth Well and supported by strategic investment from Mad’a Investment Company, Al-Akeel family and other prominent investors.

The funding will fuel the growth of Teeela across the GCC, with imminent strategic expansion in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. This will strengthen Teeela’s regional presence beyond its Kuwait headquarters as it targets the Middle East’s $30 billion gifting market, including family products, children’s goods and toys.

Abdulwahab Al-Khulaifi, co-founder and CEO of Teeela said, “We are proud to receive the backing of such well-respected investors who believe in our vision to be the number one choice for family gifting experiences. There is a huge opportunity to serve the gifting market with an exceptional range of products and personalized gift-wrapping options, providing customers with unmatched speed and convenience. This funding will underpin our regional expansion, support product development and strengthen our ability to attract top regional talent to be part of our journey.”

Wealth Well CEO Aqeel Alrajhi said, “Teeela’s team is committed to delivering a unique customer experience, ranging from the app journey to various new and innovative products. Teeela is well-positioned to take advantage of the rapidly changing e-commerce market and expanding its presence across the GCC and the broader MENA region.”

Abdullah Abdulaziz Al-Othaim, CEO of Mad’a Investment Company added, “Teeela has carved a strong ecommerce niche in Kuwait which, through the right strategic partnerships and investment, can proliferate across the Middle East. The business is ideally suited to meet the high online retail expectations of GCC consumers.”

Teeela provides a large selection of thousands of toys, with customised and personalized gifting options including bespoke wrapping and last-minute ordering. With super-fast, same-day delivery and an average time from order to handover of just four hours, Teeela provides a uniquely fast and seamless experience. The business has grown rapidly from its founding team to more than 60 colleagues in just four years.

The app has proven to be very popular and successful amongst customers, with conversion rates between four to five times higher than average ecommerce marketplaces and high customer retention. Teeela is also growing its team and bringing in key regional talent as part of a recruitment phase in the second half of 2022.

August 1st 2022, 6:58 am

What is the state of open banking regulations in Mena today?

Wamda

Abdulla Almoayed is the founder and CEO of Tarabut Gateway, an open banking startup headquartered in the UAE

The tide of open banking regulation in the Middle East is rapidly evolving. In the past year, we witnessed preparatory outlines and regulatory discussions for open banking implementation. This year, the conversation continues, and implementation plans are set in motion with regulators leading the market.

Open banking’s value proposition hinges on the availability of dynamic and straightforward regulatory frameworks. Ecosystem scaling requires fintechs, banks, and third-party service providers (TPPs) to be able to interact without friction when building new products and services.

The Middle East and North Africa's (Mena) overall regulatory landscape is a picture of rapid improvement and development. The Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) has introduced licences authorising the provision of account information services (AIS) and payment initiation services (PIS) activities. 

On the other hand, Saudi Arabia is putting its 2021-introduced open banking policy into practice as part of the country’s "Vision 2030" plan to optimally position the kingdom for a digitised world economy. In its endeavours to encourage open banking and fintech innovation, the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) is leading the way, now requiring banks to open their APIs.

Outside of the GCC, open banking is increasingly high on the agenda. For example, while Egypt’s regulatory situation is not yet formalised, its central bank recently made its national payments system more versatile, paving the way for the growth of an open banking ecosystem. While Morocco has introduced bespoke payments on regulation and is working on an open banking framework. Similarly, Jordan is at the preparatory stage of open banking regulation. 

Regional powerhouses moving towards open banking: UAE and Saudi Arabia. 

In a milestone decision in April, the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) granted its very first open banking licence to Tarabut Gateway. The legitimacy and reassurance bestowed upon open banking service providers through licensing is key for collaboration among disruptors and legacy players across the financial system. 

The DFSA operates on a licensing framework enabling AIS and PIS activities ahead of final regulatory clarity. Similarly, Abu Dhabi Global Markets has contributed a licensing framework attempting to map a way forward for the emerging open banking and open finance sectors.

In keeping with the Emirates’ ambitious ‘Vision 2030’, on 28 June - the Dubai International Financial Center launched its Open Finance Lab, an exploratory incubator for open finance solutions with Tarabut Gateway as its preferred platform partner.

Meanwhile, the drafting of high-level regulation happens at the Central Bank of UAE. The federal institution is consulting with government and private entities about the extent of binding laws and the long-term regulatory environment for open banking.

Open banking in Saudi Arabia has been characterised by incredible speed when it comes to ecosystem and regulatory innovation this year. Observing and learning from the UK’s regime on open banking, SAMA has moved boldly in recent months, drawing up comprehensive fintech regulations and gearing its financial services towards innovation. An AIS and PIS licensing regime is expected very shortly.

Synergies in Saudi Arabia multiply, as the country’s ‘Vision 2030’ – aiming at the transition to a knowledge-based economy – aligns companies and state actors on innovative sector goals. The kingdom has declared its intention to achieve 70 per cent digital payment transactions by 2030, which open banking can help empower by enabling instant and direct bank to bank payments that removes frictions in the current payment journey.

For potential fintech customers, the Saudi market is compelling with a young population of underserved but tech-savvy potential users. At the start of 2022, the country counted 81 fintech startups, recording a 37 per cent increase over the course of last year.

The kingdom has already become a viable centre of peer-to-peer (P2P) lending ventures, with P2P players benefitting from novel digital banking infrastructure, e-KYC standards, and a Credit Bureau.

Bahrain as a fintech pioneer

The region’s fintech pioneer, Bahrain, has steadily grown its domestic fintech ecosystem. The Central Bank of Bahrain’s (CBB) Financial Services Development Strategy maps out the sector’s development goals between 2022 and 2026. 

June 2022 has seen implemented rules mandating financial institutions to make data available about ATM and branch locations, and domestic and international payments - another step towards an open data environment.

Having successfully nurtured regional fintech champions, Bahrain’s focus in 2022 and beyond will be to increase investments in the sector, introduce a digital version of its currency - the ‘digital dinar’ - and implement an open finance framework, the next step in the open banking’s movement.

Up and coming: Oman and Egypt

In early 2022, Oman joined its neighbours by deliberating on an open banking API strategy. The country’s roadmap plans several ecosystem accelerators including a regulatory sandbox, a cloud computing framework and an e-KYC initiative.

In light of the Gulf’s thriving fintech ecosystem and forward-looking regulatory approach, Egypt has also made notable advances. Its central bank (The CBE) is actively pushing for a national network of instantaneous payments. Since launching its InstaPay app in March 2022, a network of ten banks now support Egypt’s move towards a digitised banking system. In March, the CBE introduced a KYC project to facilitate online banking account creation, thus eliminating a crucial obstacle for wider open banking adoption.

What lies ahead for the ecosystem?

Considering the recent and ongoing developments, fintech innovators may look forward to the next step in open banking implementation across Mena. 

Examples of use cases likely to dominate the industry in 2022 include digital payments and instant cross-border payments, ‘buy now, pay later’ (BNPL), AIS & PIS products, KYC, and personalised digital banking. For instance, 21 per cent of total online payments will be made through wallets by 2024, overtaking cash on delivery transactions.  

Open Banking API infrastructure sits at the intersection of all use-cases. Tarabut Gateway empowers banks, fintechs and TPPs to build out the concrete ecosystem that forward-looking regulation has provided the safeguards for - so all boats may rise with the tide.

Open banking will not stop at transactions and payments. The first cross-sector collaborations are already underway and developing towards an open finance data sharing model, integrating telecommunications, insurance, utilities, transportation, and health.

August 1st 2022, 4:54 am

Openner launches Web3-focused Qurious Labs

Wamda

Press release:

Qurious Labs is the first Web3-focused Venture Studio model to hit the MENA market. This model serves to back bold entrepreneurs in MENA building web3 companies that utilise blockchain, digital currencies, NFTs, gaming as well as explore the Metaverse and decentralised applications leveraging. 

By combining the incentive structure of a co-founder, the resources of a development agency, and the venture fund network, Qurious Labs can work with Web3 creatives and technologists who have extremely limited resources and launch world-class products with them.

The Venture Studio is backed by Openner, a Venture Capital firm in Egypt, and is confident more VCs will realise the value of the Venture Studio model and the potential web3 has on emerging markets when it comes to utilising open protocols on the blockchain and token economics. 

As a studio, its goal is to help developing markets in accessing a global talent and capital pool while empowering people to earn and own a piece of this new internet. "We deeply believe that web3 will have the biggest impact on society and business since the introduction of the internet", says Ahmed El Wassimy, Studio Director. "Over half a million developers around the world are building the infrastructure that will shape an always-on, economically equitable future for society leveraging web3 and we're excited to embark on this journey to bridge the gap between web3 and emerging marketing in the Middle East and North Africa."

Qurious Labs has a primary goal, and that is to offer a complete ecosystem for builders to launch their web3 ventures and brands to explore web3 business models. They do so by supporting builders by being a one-stop shop for them to build and launch their web3 projects. Builders get insightful knowledge from experienced builders, thought leaders, and veteran investors to build and fund resilient communities, platforms, and economies.  

Qurious Labs is growing a network of web3 talent and expertise in many fields, from UX/UI, full-stack, content creation, community building, marketing, and game design & development, to leverage and contribute to web3 projects they work on and have 'ownership' in high-quality projects before anyone else.

"Web3 is the golden age for creators and artists," says Kareem Karam, Venture Architect at Qurious Labs, "We see the potential of Web3 as a force for good, and we are eager to work with policymakers to define a vision for how to use these powerful new tools to benefit society and ensure they realise their full potential.”

Many renowned VCs are betting big on web3 business models and gaming. After this global recession storm passes, the team at Qurious Labs believes this is when web3 will start getting most of the attention. "The old ways of raising money and growing at all costs are over with. Web3 communities and networks will motivate participants to become owners and investors in the networks they want to be a part of and help grow. This will be a whole new way of raising capital from your early believers and die-hard fans. That's the power of web3 and there’s no better time to build for it." says El Wassimy. 

Qurious Labs is focusing on venture building and venture support that will on-ramp adoption for emerging markets in MENA while delivering and capturing value with web3 communities globally. Qurious Labs hires talent from all around the world to build upon existing infrastructure and looks forward to working with partners in government, the private sector, and civil society in UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt to shape what promises to be one of the most consequential conversations of our time.

"The way we coordinate, govern, and participate in networks will change the way we work and value our time with the growth of web3 and we believe that  Qurious Labs is well positioned and resourced to unlock that potential and prioritise the development of world-class, decentralized digital infrastructure for communities everywhere," says Ash Rofail, General Partner at Openner. 

July 31st 2022, 10:13 am

ChatFood raises $3 million bridge round led by Antler

Wamda

Press release:

UAE-headquartered omnichannel ordering and data-driven marketing platform, ChatFood, has announced a bridge round of $3 million led by Antler with a reserved amount for key strategic Saudi partners. Other participants in the round include family offices such as 6G Capital and existing investors such as Guillaume Pousaz’s Zinal Growth. This brings ChatFood’s funding to date to $7 million after last year's seed round led by leading regional VC funds BECO & Wamda Capital. 

The funds will be primarily applied towards setting up operations in Saudi Arabia, where the market is expected to reach over $25 billion by 2026, as well as product development with the aim to unlock further efficiencies for restaurants, bars, hotels, and entertainment venues. 

ChatFood’s co-founder and CEO, Benjamin Mouflard, shares, "We are looking forward to providing our services in Saudi Arabia as the market is set to witness phenomenal growth within the next four years, further strengthening ChatFood’s leading position in the GCC” 

ChatFood has already empowered over 3,000 hospitality venues across the Middle East to drive more than $100 million in sales and convert more than 1 million visitors into direct customers, growing at an impressive 260% YoY. ChatFood’s newly launched NFC/QR ordering system has been able to deliver outstanding results for its partners: 35% higher average spend, 3x more tips, and 25% more labour efficiency. This has allowed ChatFood to unlock revenue and margins at a time of surging food costs, labour shortages, and increasing commissions for hospitality venues. 

Christopher Dix, Global Capital Director and Head of MENAP at Antler, said: “We believe Ben and an exceptional ChatFood team are building a ubiquitous digital solution across the F&B value chain. Creating a single platform that combines digital ordering, payments, logistics, analytics, and marketing offers up an invaluable proposition.”

Further commenting, Christopher Dix said “ChatFood at its core enables F&B and hospitality operators to improve margins and run their venues more efficiently, whilst also ensuring an optimal customer experience – a mutualistic solution across the board. We believe ChatFood is the right team to build the leading omnichannel ordering and payments solution and look forward to helping them cement their MENAP leadership position against an exciting and ever-evolving regional backdrop.”

July 28th 2022, 10:52 am

Artifi raises $3.26 million in investment

Wamda

Source: Business Insider

Artfi, a Dubai-based blockchain NFT ecosystem received funds worth $3.26 million at a valuation of $100 million. Investors that participated in this round include Sheikha Hend Al Qassemi, a member of the ruling family of Sharjah; Raza Beig, director of Landmark Group, UAE among others.

Founded by art connoisseur Asif Kamal, this startup will concentrate on creating fine art NFTs. Artfi will use this capital to build a dedicated marketplace for fine art NFTs, as well as for product and team development.

“Artfi was launched with a vision to make art accessible to everyone. Each art piece that we bring and fractionalize into 5-10k NFTs will be priced at the real value of art with predefined coordinates and fraction number, unlike super inflated JPEG NFTs that is crashing badly today,” said Asif Kamal, founder and CEO of Artfi.

It is building fine arts NFTs which represent iconic blue-chip artworks of world-renowned artists like Picasso, VS Gaitonde, M F Husain, Sacha Jafri, and Banksy among others. Blue-chip artworks are made by renowned artists.

The funding comes when NFT transaction activity has declined from $3.9 billion in February 2022 to less than $1 billion in March 2022.

“This is an opportunity for people to now diversify their portfolios from stocks and fixed deposits and invest in one of the largest asset classes that have outperformed all these traditional investments for over 30 years,” said Asif Kamal, founder and CEO of Artfi.

The global art market has a total estimated global sales of $65 billion, according to Statista. The fine art fintech company is also gearing up for whitelisting of its offerings from August — which means users get guaranteed early access.

July 28th 2022, 10:52 am

Enhance Ventures launches $30 million Builders Fund

Wamda

Press release:

Enhance Ventures, the MENAPT region’s leading venture studio has announced the launch of its $30 million Builders Fund, which will invest in the company’s next set of ventures for the future of finance and commerce in the Middle East.

Through the fund, the company plans to create 5,000 high-tech jobs, produce 500 business leaders, train 50 capable founders, and be the institutional cofounder of at least 5 major exits in the region in the next 5-10 years. “As a venture studio, we support founders materially in the early stages of venture development, when they need help the most. This dramatically increases the success rate for startups, and makes entrepreneurship an economic engine for our region,” said Mohammad AlHokail, Partner in Enhance Ventures. “As a studio, we plan to expedite ecosystem development and increase activity between this ecosystem, starting with Dubai and Riyadh, and other, more developed ecosystems.”

Launched in 2016, Enhance focuses on building innovative digital businesses for the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and Turkey. The company is Saudi-first when it comes to launching and growing businesses, with a sizable team in Riyadh, while it has a special focus on the UAE and the rest of the GCC. It also has a technology centre in Istanbul, and satellite offices in Cairo, Amman and Beirut.

The new fund will invest exclusively in the studio’s upcoming ventures, many of which will focus on gaps in the fintech space. “Trends such as web3, open banking, the move to a cashless society, the need for frictionless consumer and SME finance, and the growth of B2B commerce have created new opportunities in the MENAPT region,” said Ritesh Tilani, Partner in Enhance Ventures. “Paired with Enhance’s venture building playbook, its proprietary collection of venture building tools, and access to top talent, we believe Enhance is uniquely positioned to continue its success.”

Enhance Ventures has long been a global pioneer in the venture studio space. Aside from its acclaimed studio white paper, Enhance also developed and maintains the Global Studio Map, the most comprehensive database of all 784 venture studios worldwide. The Enhance team also serve on the boards of the two global associations for venture studios, US-based Global Startup Studio Network, and Europe-based StudioHub.

“Acting as an institutional co-founder, we offer entrepreneurs support with our tried and tested venture building methodology, venture architects, technology development, marketing support, human resources capabilities, our talent database, seed and follow-on funding, and office space, among others,” said Alper Celen, Partner in Enhance Ventures. “This approach of shared resources allows us to take any given venture through the stages of ideation, validation, creation, growth and scale up with minimal cost and time.”

Enhance’s first venture Joi Gifts is now the region’s largest online gifting marketplace. It was successfully spun off from the studio 10 months ago when it raised its Series A funding from investors such as Knuru Capital, MENA Moonshots, Wa’ed Ventures (the venture investments arm of Saudi Aramco) and Panthera Capital (the investment arm of Fujairah Holding), among others. The business has tripled in revenue since then and is currently raising its Series B funding round.

Other portfolio companies include Right Farm, a B2B agriculture technology firm which raised its seed round of $2.8M earlier this year. Clevr is a consumer-facing payment and rewards platform that provides SMEs with sales and marketing tools. Blue Terra is a conscious-commerce marketplace that delivers eco-friendly and organic products. Both Clevr and Blue Terra have gained significant traction and are in the process of spinning off from the studio and raising their own independent rounds of funding. Enhance’s portfolio currently stands at an IRR of 72%.

In 2021, the company also launched a new corporate innovation business unit called Enhance Innovation to support corporations and government organizations with their studio strategy, and in building individual ventures and studios of their own. The new unit has already had major successes through collaborations with large players such as DIFC and ADQ. Enhance Innovation is increasing its capacity to handle the demand for corporate venture building. Alex Hutley will soon join and lead Enhance Innovation, having served OLX as Global Brand Director and driving internal venture building there. The Enhance leadership team also includes Venture Partner Patrick Montague, ex-COO of the leading New York-based venture studio Betaworks.

July 28th 2022, 10:52 am

The startups 3D printing new smiles

Wamda

When 3D printing technology started to become more ubiquitous around the world, many claimed that there would come a day when every household would own a 3D printer. While such a reality has yet to materialise, 3D printing technology has disrupted several industries, including healthcare.

Coupled with the rise in social media and a healthy dose in vanity, 3D printing technology has become a key component of achieving the perfect smile through clear aligners, an industry that is set to be worth $32 billion by 2030. About 60-70 per cent of the global population want and could benefit from clear dental aligners.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), malocclusion of teeth, or teeth misalignment, is the third most prevalent dental disease after dental caries and periodontal disease. Traditionally, metal braces were used to treat patients with mild to moderate malocclusion, but as the cost of 3D printing technology has declined, 3D printed plastic aligners have become the more popular choice to straighten teeth. 

Companies like US-based Align Technology, the company behind Invisalign, adopted a direct-to-consumer (D2C) approach, making use of social media to target consumers. By 2020, Invisalign’s aligners were used by 10.9 million people and worldwide Invisalign shipments were about 413,700 cases. To date, over five million teenagers have started orthodontic treatment with Invisalign clear aligners. 

In the Middle East and North Africa (Mena), the orthodontic opportunity is ripe for the taking, with three regionally-born startups emerging over the past few years, namely Smileneo, Basma and Eon Dental. Using a similar business model to Invisalign, these startups use 3D printing technology, advertise on social media to sell directly to consumers online and offer apps to monitor the progress of their treatment. 

"As an orthodontist, I saw the industry is already being transformed. So I started to think, what if 90 per cent of my job could be automated and replaced by technology? What if we minimise the number of visits to clinics and eliminate part of the cost and pass those savings to the consumer. This had me get started on founding Basma," says Cherif Massoud, CEO and co-founder of Basma.

"I was very frustrated at the thought that clear aligners are an extremely good solution, but it can only be offered to the rich because the cost of the treatment is really high. So our mission was to make it more affordable from the beginning onwards. When we looked around us, and we saw how others were doing it, so there was the regular dental clinic that you can go to that has a pretty expensive treatment, and is not using the power of technology. There is no CRM, there is no integration with the buy now pay later companies and no proper customer support. We saw a lot of gaps," he adds.

Basma was initially founded in Lebanon before moving its headquarters to the UK, but the startup has its operations team based in the UAE, focusing primarily on the GCC region. It handles consultations, the scanning and treatments as well as produces clear aligners in-house while providing an end-to-end digital solution for payments. Last year, Basma raised a $3 million Series A round in order to ramp up its operations in the GCC and grow its network of clinics. 

UAE-based Smileneo came out of stealth mode last year after securing $2 million in a Seed round and securing a licence from the Dubai Health Authority for its teledentistry platform. 

“Based on our research, 85 per cent of people in the region could benefit from orthodontic treatments, but less than 1 per cent receive it each year,” said Jonathan Doerr, founder and CEO of Smileneo in a statement. “Many of them don’t have access to quality orthodontic care that fits their budget and busy lifestyles. We’re digitising orthodontics to modernise and improve patient experiences while enhancing convenience and affordability.”

The best funded of these startups is Jordan’s Eon Dental, which managed to secure a $26 million Series B round. For Eon, the pandemic was a key accelerant of their business as clear aligners proved to be the best suited treatment as they do not require frequent visits to clinics or dentists. 

"The overall narrative around clear aligners is changing dramatically, especially post Covid-19,” says Qais Sabri, CEO and co-founder of Eon. “There has been a serious change in terms of adoption, market record, market potential and willingness to accept the fact that clear aligners is becoming a thing. The segment blew up along the lines of self care and self improvement, because people were spending a lot of time home on Zoom calls, focusing on improving the health and appearance of their smiles." 

Global expansion 

Besides Jordan, Eon also operates in Europe, Asia, and North America, which dominates the global dental 3D printing sector. 

Cultivating a global mindset has enabled the startup to tap into a global talent pool and benchmark its product with international competitors, Sabri argues.

"Being an emerging business based out of an emerging market has not given us the vantage point or access to talent and now being a global business allows us to become a more decentralised organisation and that means more power and more resilience," he adds.

The market in the region presents tremendous opportunities for growth for all three startups. That said, they are all actively looking to target other markets where the purchasing power is higher and the size of the dental tech market is bigger. 

Echoing similar sentiment, Massoud says that Basma has robust plans to further scale its business in Europe.

"It is a growing segment in the market; it's about $150 billion globally. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, it is a market worth around $4.1 billion. In the next five years, we want to have half our revenue from the Middle East and the other half from Europe. Of all the markets we operate in, Saudi Arabia is our biggest target market," he concludes. 

 

July 28th 2022, 10:52 am

Egypt’s fashion marketplace TFK closes $2.6 million Seed round

Wamda

Press release:

The Fashion Kingdom (“TFK”), Egypt’s pioneering curated fashion, beauty and home accessories e-commerce marketplace with 360 value proposition for brands, announces the successful completion of a $2.6 million Seed funding round.

The Seed funding round was co-led by CVentures, Egypt’s first corporate venture capital firm and A15, MENA’s leading early-stage venture capital firm which made a follow-on investment with participation from existing investors and fashion industry veterans Paul Antaki and Nasser Chourbagi. New participating investors include Lotus Capital, the sustainability and inclusion venture fund, Africa-focused investors Raba Capital, Sunny Side Venture Partners, Foundation Ventures and The Cairo Angels.

Proceeds will be used to accelerate TFK’s efficient growth, build scalable technology and grow the team. Another strategic priority is to strengthen and scale TFK’s 360 value proposition for brands which involves offering a one-stop-shop solution covering operations, co-marketing, omnichannel, and digital content creation services that assist local fashion brands in their digital transformation efforts, grow their online sales and help them become more sustainable. 

The co-Founders Fadi Antaki, Marianne Simaika and Karim Abd El Kader launched TFK in July 2020 with the purpose of helping local fashion entrepreneurs and brand owners sell online, serving customers through an affordable and convenient shopping experience and creating meaningful careers for young and emerging talents. 

TFK is currently helping more than 200 local and international leading brands grow their sales online through their curated marketplace and 360 value proposition. Besides, over 135,000 customers are using TFK for their fashion shopping needs. The company also supports the careers of female talent as 50% of the company’s managers and 43% of its workforce are women. 

Fadi Antaki, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at The Fashion Kingdom said: “We are delighted to announce The Fashion Kingdom’s $2.6 million seed fundraise. The support of new and existing investors is a proud moment for the entire team.

“TFK is a curated marketplace much needed by the rapidly growing fashion e-commerce world. Our market opportunity is vast, and the drivers underpinning it - are compelling. We have grown by more than 3.3x in the last year, and the online customer groups we cater to, are only growing larger. Our competitive differentiators, plus access to our investors’ wealth of knowledge and regional expertise, positions us perfectly to become the market leader in Egypt and beyond.”

Egypt’s fashion e-commerce space has no clear market leader, and TFK is filling the gap. The company’s KPIs are compelling: order numbers have grown 3.3x year-on-year, with this rate set to continue in 2022. 

TFK’s total addressable market is $4.2 billion in Egypt including Fashion, personal beauty & household, and home furniture e-commerce categories according to the latest research by Statista. In 2021, the global fashion e-commerce market value was nearly $700 billion. By the end of 2022, it is expected to surpass that figure, and in 2025, it will reach around $1.2 trillion according to Statista. 

Shady Tadross, Director at CVentures, said: “TFK’s digital launchpad for fashion, beauty and home accessory brands conforms well with Egypt’s rapidly moving e-commerce scene, essentially enabling small and large brands to sell online as the Company makes shopping easy and accessible for a large and growing target audience. CVentures is excited at the prospect of working closely with TFK, and we look forward to helping Fadi, Marianne and Karim achieve their vision and grow into additional markets.”

July 26th 2022, 11:07 am

Creative Dock Group’s FoundersLane expands to Egypt

Wamda

Berlin-based corporate venture builder FoundersLane, which was recently acquired by Creative Dock Group (CDG), has expanded its operations to Egypt. This comes as part of the Group's commitment to invest up to €100 million in startups based in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena).

The new venture, named FoundersLane Egypt, is co-led by Egyptian entrepreneurs Mohamed Aboulnaga and Anas Rabah, both venture capitalists and former startup founders. Aboulnaga recently founded PiE, an acquisitions and mergers (M&A) advisory firm and is the co-founder of MNT-Halan, an Egypt-based fintech super app and one of the country's best-funded startups. Together, Rabah and Aboulnaga worked as a duo at Halan and UAE-based super app Careem and recently co-founded Klivvr, a fintech-focused venture capital firm.

“Many of the large corporations in the country are still yet to wake up to the benefits of digitisation. The corporate venture building concept pioneered by the likes of FoundersLane will shake up the traditional way of doing business while enabling startups to have the opportunity to work with corporate partners and have access to investors and mentorship. This will ultimately result in increased digitisation across most traditional sectors like FMCG," Rabah told Wamda.

Besides Egypt, FoundersLane also has an office up and running in Saudi Arabia. The company has provided services to many clients across Mena including in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It counts Saudi public transport and logistics company Saudi Arabia Transport Company (SAPTCO) as one of its corporate clients. 

Egypt is the third-largest ecosystem in Mena. In the first half of this year, Egyptian startups managed to raise $317 million, a 156 per cent increase year on year.

July 25th 2022, 11:39 am

Can Palestine become a birthplace for impact-driven ventures?

Wamda

Majd Zghyer is the strategy officer at uMake, an entrepreneurship support organisation (ESO) based in Ramallah, Palestine.

In a recent encounter with my friend Baker Bozeyeh, co-founder and CEO of Flowless Water Systems, the word that came up most often throughout the conversation was ‘impact’. Inspired by the need to provide a tech-enabled solution to the challenges of managing water usage, Baker and his colleagues have embarked on a grand ambition of building an ‘impact-driven’ business that seeks to address water scarcity challenges in Palestine and across the world. A graduate of Palestine’s Founder Institute pre-Seed accelerator programme, Flowless represents a genuine success story of determination, resilience and commitment to deliver positive impact. Since its establishment in 2019, Flowless has managed to provide its smart water management technology to a number of diverse beneficiaries across Palestine and Jordan. Currently, the startup is planning to scale its operations in some countries across sub-Saharan Africa to help in the global effort aimed at delivering sustainable access to safely managed water to 2.2 billion people.

Ultimately, achieving positive measurable social, economic and environmental impact has been gaining popularity from diverse business communities across the globe. The mantra of ‘Doing Well by Doing Good’ has infiltrated economic thinking and it has been used widely by top tier CEOs of large corporations such as Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, the US-based investment management firm which manages more than $10 trillion in assets. In his latest annual letter to CEOs, Fink referred to the ‘power of stakeholder capitalism’ in providing sustainable solutions to the enormous challenges that face our societies in an interconnected globalised economy. Precisely, he advised business leaders to shift from solely focusing on maximising shareholder value into a long-term inclusive approach that takes into consideration the well-being of and impact on all stakeholders affected by the company’s activities, including its customers, employees, suppliers and the surrounding environment.

The impact investing revolution

The ideas in Larry Fink’s annual letter have been embraced by a wider segment of the global investment community and are now being echoed across various asset allocation categories including public markets, private equity and venture capital. Importantly, impact investing has emerged as a distinct field from the standard environmental, social, governance (ESG) investment practices adopted by an increasing number of companies across the world. While ESG investing is focusing on merely ‘reducing harm’ through managing risks, impact investing, on the other hand, goes one extra mile by ‘intentionally’ prioritising the creation of sustainable solutions to complex developmental challenges through investing in businesses that aim to deliver financial returns and simultaneously achieve a lasting real-world impact. According to official numbers by the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), the impact investing market has grown from $512 billion in 2018 to $715 billion in total assets under management by the end of 2020. Moreover, a 2022 survey by global asset managers Schroders, covering 770 institutional investors that manage more than $27 trillion worth of assets, found that 48 per cent of asset owners covered in the survey believe that impact has become a preferred investment approach to achieve sustainability goals while also delivering positive financial returns.

Indeed, investments made for the intention of achieving measurable impact alongside a robust financial return have also been deployed into impact-driven tech and tech-enabled startups that aim to solve critical development challenges that face emerging markets and developing economies. The United Nations Development Programme has been active in promoting impact investing as a path towards achieving the 17 globally recognised sustainable development goals. From fighting extreme poverty, ensuring quality education to providing clean water and sustainable energy sources, allocating capital to innovative tech-enabled businesses has become an effective tool to increase the private sector’s role in achieving the SDGs and help create a more prosperous, sustainable and inclusive world by 2030.

Across the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region, a diverse geography that faces insurmountable development challenges, VC funding deployed in impact-driven ventures has seen a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15 per cent between 2016 and Q3 2021 - totalling $444 million of capital invested across 403 VC transactions – based on findings of Magnitt’s 2021 MENA VC Impact Investment Report. Yet, the total invested amount represents only 7 per cent of all VC capital deployed and 16 per cent of all VC transactions across Mena. Despite the positive growth in recent years, it’s believed that Mena-based investors and startups have the key ingredients to promote and stimulate the impact investing industry even further and take it to the mainstream of VC investing in the region. Another pertinent consideration is the geographic concentration of VC impact investments across Mena. While Saudi Arabia registered the largest number of VC impact investment transactions (80 deals, representing around 20 per cent of the total 403 deals), impact-driven startups based in the UAE attracted the biggest impact VC funding volume with $164 million raised - representing 37 per cent of the total capital deployed in impact-driven ventures across Mena between 2016 and Q3 2021. The most-funded impact-driven startup was Dubai-based Yellow Door Energy which managed to close an investment round of $65 million in 2019 led by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Arab Petroleum Investments Corporation (APICORP).

While we should celebrate the rapid transformation happening in the region’s most advanced startup ecosystems (those in the UAE, KSA and Egypt), VC impact investing can also offer an alternative route for less developed ecosystems to flourish and scale in various sectors including edtech, healthtech, agritech and fintech. In other words, nascent startup ecosystems such as Palestine can be perfectly positioned to create a pipeline of impact-driven businesses capable of attracting the attention of impact investors from the region and beyond. Of course, similar conditions can be applied to other startup ecosystems across the region as well despite the focus here on Palestine given its unique context, challenges and untapped potential.

Profit and purpose are inseparable in Palestine

Palestine and its economy are facing huge challenges due to long years of political instability, military occupation and restrictions on movement of people, capital, goods and services. Despite the challenging situation, Palestinian business leaders and entrepreneurs have managed to navigate through the storms and build successful, viable and impactful businesses. Operating in a tough business environment can provide the seeds for innovation and sustainable impact where profit and purpose can merge to enable a plethora of opportunities to unlock the development potential of local communities. Within the Palestinian context, impact can naturally be embedded in the venture’s business model. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, challenges can now be seen as opportunities rather than threats. It is time to believe that Palestinian impact-driven ventures are capable of creating attractive and often overlooked investment opportunities for impact investors from the region and beyond who want to do well by doing good.

Palestinians themselves are leading remarkable efforts in moving impact investing into the mainstream and trying to find more efficient alternatives to the traditional ‘donor-recipient’ relationship that has prevailed for decades. For example, Palestine’s Sovereign Development Fund, PIF, plays a catalytic role in creating the foundations for a thriving impact investing industry in Palestine through its huge investments in strategic sectors such as clean energy, healthcare, agriculture, education and technology. PIF does not only invest directly in these critical sectors, it also plays an influential role in attracting regional and global partners to invest in Palestine’s future.

Within the Palestinian entrepreneurship ecosystem, the leading VC fund in Palestine, Ibtikar, is providing a similar role to PIF by offering much needed ‘smart’ capital (Seed and Series A) to high-potential early-stage startups founded by Palestinian entrepreneurs. Though not explicitly categorising itself as an impact investor, Ibtikar continues to fund tech and tech-enabled startups that respond to developmental challenges and can scale regionally and globally.

Hopefully soon, we will witness greater attention directed to Palestinian impact-driven ventures by regional and global impact investors. These Palestinian impact-driven ventures are addressing challenges in critical fields such as Sunbox in the clean energy industry, Hakini in mental health, Naviatx in insurance and Greeners in agriculture - to name a few. There is no doubt that like the passion and enthusiasm that drive the founders of Flowless to succeed, Palestinian impact-driven ventures are capable of providing robust financial returns while also delivering impact to the wider region and the world.

 

July 25th 2022, 11:39 am

Egypt’s Cartona raises $12 million Series A round

Wamda

Press release:

Cartona, a B2B platform based in Egypt, has closed its $12 million Series A fundraise led by Silicon Badia - the venture capital firm investing in global technology entrepreneurs, together with the active participation of the SANAD Fund for MSME, an impact investment fund dedicated to supporting entrepreneurs in the Middle East and North Africa. Arab Bank Accelerator and Sunny Side Ventures also participated, alongside existing investors - Global Ventures and Kepple Ventures.

Founded in 2019, Cartona is digitising the traditional trade market in Egypt including mom-and-pop stores, FMCG producers, wholesalers, and distributors. The startup embraces a cashless society vision, investing in embedded finance, payments, and operational integration with all stakeholders. This provides retailers and suppliers with an integrated solution boosting financial inclusion enabling them to run and grow their business more efficiently, and reach end-consumers with essential products at affordable prices.

Cartona’s model is asset-light, not owning a single product or warehouse or vehicle. This allows Cartona to execute its strategy of digitizing Egypt’s traditional, largely offline trade market by eliminating inefficiencies across the supply chain while enabling seamless financial services solutions to an underserved network of hundreds of thousands of shops. Mahmoud Talaat, CEO and co-founder of Cartona, commented:  “We are delighted to complete our Series A fundraise. The market context for Cartona is hugely attractive, and we are just getting started. Egypt has hundreds of thousands of mom-and-pop stores that are core to our business model. We will continue empowering them via efficient and seamless solutions in their trade and financial cycle with FMCG companies and wholesalers, aligning with our mission to help people better manage and control their businesses.”

The Egyptian market opportunity for Cartona is compelling. The overall retail market size is $120 billion, with the Food & Beverages market worth $70 billion. There are over 400K shops and thousands of international and local brands across Egypt, with the sector growing annually by 8%. Namek T. Zu’bi, Founding Managing Partner at Silicon Badia, said: "We are thrilled to partner with the Cartona team to help them continue to disrupt the $120Bn Egyptian retail market through its B2B technology platform and embedded financial service offerings. The market is hungry for these types of solutions and we believe Cartona's asset-light approach will allow them to serve as many marketplace participants as possible in a highly efficient manner."

Proceeds will be used to turbo-charge Cartona’s expansion across Egypt, cover all governorates, grow its product, technology, and services, and explore new verticals beyond FMCG. Dr Daniela Beckmann, SANAD Board Chairperson concluded: “We are incredibly proud of this transaction as it is the first investment of SANAD ESF II in Egypt, continuing the success of ESF I investments made in the country. By providing both financing and software tailored to the market, Cartona’s digital platform is supporting innovative MSME retailers across Egypt, which will greatly contribute to SANAD’s mission of pursuing growth and employment creation across the region.”

July 25th 2022, 11:39 am

UAE’s Qstay closes $6.5 million Seed round

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Press release:

Qstay Hospitality Technologies ("Qstay" or the "Company"), a Dubai DIFC-based next-generation hospitality company that is redefining the guest experience through technology and design, announced that they have recently closed on a SEED round of $6.5 million. Funding was a mix of debt and equity.

Qstay was officially launched in 2020 and was co-founded by long-time UAE resident Artur Khayrullin, CO-CEO; Ukrainian-born Ekaterina Rogozhina, CCO; Ukrainian American Alec Fesenko, CO-CEO and his wife Natalya Fesenko, the initial investor. Since its founding, Qstay has executed its mission to transform the hospitality industry through modern, technology-powered service and inspiring, thoughtfully designed accommodations, combined into one seamlessly managed experience. Qstay currently operates close to 200 properties in the UAE and Europe, 200 more are signed and expects to have 450 revenue-generating units by the end of 2022.

Qstay operates as a virtual hotel brand which provides luxury hotel-like services and amenities such as bathrobes, slippers, luxury toiletries, bathroom amenities, tea, and Starbucks coffee, additionally, Qstay provides digital app-based access to nearby pools, beaches, gyms and spas for its guests staying in beachfront properties.

Qstay holds coveted Superhost status and higher ratings on Airbnb than its competitors. That translates into an exceptional occupancy rate, which is now consistently above 80% and an outstanding REVPAR of $195, which is well above the competition. Qstay has had positive EBITDA for the last two quarters and projects to be Net Income positive in Q4 2022, only in the second year of operation.

The company's revenue has been growing at a rate of over 100% quarter over quarter and Qstay expects its portfolio to grow to over 600 units and to achieve revenue of $50 million in 2023.

Qstay’s founder and CO-CEO Artur Khayrullin says the capital will be used to "accelerate the amazing growth we've seen so far," The concept plans to expand to at least five cities across Europe and the Middle East in the next 12 months.

"Driven by QSTAY's differentiated digital service model, the Company can reduce operating costs by as much as 50% compared to traditional hotels. Through innovative technology, additional digital services such as mobile-based access to the facilities of top beach resorts and thoughtfully designed accommodations, QSTAY is revolutionising the hospitality industry," says Artur Khayrullin. "With one-of-a-kind modernised service, our guests experience an uncompromising quality with inspiring design at a price point that democratizes access to an extraordinary hospitality experience."

The company leases large groups of units in the top locations, upgrades and furnishes them to the consistent luxury standard and supports them with extensive luxury hotel-like services and amenities, providing guests with exceptionally designed accommodations at affordable prices on a nightly, weekly or monthly basis.

The company also offers text-enabled around-the-clock concierge service, and confirms that while it doesn't own any of its units, all of them "are directly leased and managed by Qstay." 

"Our raise underscores the strength of the business and the rapid shift taking place within the hospitality industry due to technological innovations. Our vision for travel is making beautiful, well-designed spaces accessible to everyone with technology while providing exceptional mobile app-based add-on services," said Alec Fesenko, co-founder and CO-CEO. "We are far more efficient than traditional hotels while also providing a unique space and add-on services that are flexible enough to meet everyone's needs. Whether you're travelling on your own, for business, with your family or with friends, you will always have a space that can accommodate you."

Currently, Qstay is developing a differentiated, tech-driven platform that will provide seamless booking, digital concierge and a unified, on-demand platform for maintenance and service.

This raise will provide Qstay with additional capital to accelerate and supercharge Qstay's vision. 

Qstay plans to further capitalise on opportunities within the growing $800+ billion global lodging market and strengthen its position as a differentiated, rapidly growing innovator in the hospitality industry. Over the next few years, Qstay plans to continue investing in technology and expanding its footprint and product offering to drive an unparalleled guest experience, while also delivering even greater value to its investors, real estate partners and guests.

July 24th 2022, 11:06 am

Palestinian e-commerce Modesta raises six-figure Seed round

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Press release:

Modesta, a modest fashion startup, has raised six figures of funding in its SEED round led by 500 Startups and with the participation of the Innovative Private Sector Development Project (IPSD) program funded by the World Bank, and angel investors.

Founded in March 2020 by Shatha Ajaj, Modesta is a fast-growing modest fashion e-commerce startup, that provides diverse modest choices for women whatever their interpretation of modesty.

According to the company, modest fashion has evolved significantly in the last 10 years attracting women from all around the world who choose to wear less skin-revealing clothes either for religious or personal reasons. Modesta aggregates special collections from various vendors and brands, aiming to make finding modest fashion for an everyday easy and enjoyable experience.  "We are creating our own modest movement through collecting unique season’s latest collections that satisfy the needs of modern women who adopt modesty in their lifestyle. Modesta has gained great popularity since the start in March 2020, delivering thousands of parcels to the doorsteps of our happy customers”. Shatha Ajaj, the founder and CEO of Modesta, commented on the investment. 

Modesta will deploy the latest funding into expansion and reach a wider base of customers in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain along with the growth of the technology to aggregate more brands and vendors. Ajaj concluded, “The promised land for Modesta is a global vision as a leading Modest fashion e-commerce for women to express their individuality” Shatha added.

July 22nd 2022, 7:04 pm

FMO announces $10 million commitment to Algebra Fund II

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Press release 

FMO, the Dutch entrepreneurial development bank, and leading Egyptian venture capital firm Algebra Ventures today announced the signing of a USD 10 mln commitment for the fund manager’s second fund. The agreement was signed in the presence of H.E. Mr. Han-Maurits Schaapveld, the Dutch ambassador in Cairo.

Announced in April 2021, Algebra Ventures’ second fund invests in technology start-ups in Egypt with an allocation for the wider Middle East and Africa region. In addition to FMO who is investing through the FMO Ventures Program, other investing partners include the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

Four years into its first USD 54 mln fund, Algebra Ventures has invested in 21 start-ups and has backed world-class entrepreneurs who are building market-leading businesses. Through their new fund, Algebra Ventures’ managing partners Tarek Assad and Karim Hussein continue to support technology start-ups with access to finance and talent, driving innovation and job creation primarily in Egypt.

For the second fund, Laila Hassan and Omar Khashaba have joined Algebra Ventures as general partners, adding extensive regional and international venture capital investment experience. The fund will pursue early-stage investment opportunities in fintech, agritech, edutech, logistics, e-commerce and healthcare start-ups by partnering with high-potential founders to address specific market gaps in these sectors.

Karim Hussein, Managing Partner at Algebra Ventures, said: “It is an honor for us to have FMO as an investor in our new fund. FMO’s wealth of experience and knowledge across the African continent and their deep expertise in agritech and fintech, in particular, are of significant strategic value to Algebra. We look forward to working closely with FMO to support exceptional companies in Egypt and across Africa.”

The investment by FMO aligns with the bank’s ambition to enable innovative business models for impact across Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia. The commitment is funded through the FMO Ventures Program, a EUR 200 mln investment program funded by FMO, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the European Commission targeting early-stage technology-enabled innovative business models in frontier and growth markets.

Across the Middle East, FMO has invested early in merchant payment platform Paymob (2020), salary payment platform Dopay (2019) and SME lender and marketplace Liwwa (2018). 

Through this investment in Algebra Ventures and other initiatives, FMO continues to support the expansion of the Egyptian venture capital ecosystem.

Marieke Roestenberg, Head of the FMO Ventures Program, said: “We are excited to partner with Algebra Ventures, one of the most deep-rooted and seasoned venture capital firms in Egypt. FMO believes regional investors like Algebra Ventures play an instrumental role in both the creation and maturing of markets. We look forward to continuing to support and learn from the flourishing Egyptian venture capital ecosystem.”

July 22nd 2022, 7:04 pm

Iraqi e-commerce Orisdi raises new investment

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Press release 

The Iraq-based e-commerce business, Orisdi has raised a new six figure investment round that included the participation of existing and new investors. The round was facilitated by the Iraqi Angel Investors Network and served to reinforce the continuous growth of the business and the growing potential of e-commerce in Iraq. 

The round saw the return of existing investors, including Al Sharqiya TV, Mohamed Shaikley, Amar Shubar, Nour Sabri, Kerem Danish, Omar Al Handal from Al Handal International group, and Bassam Falah from Innovest Middle East to reaffirm their commitment to the company. The round also saw the participation of new investors, including Mohamad Ferej, Rayya Al Zubaydi, and others. Ferej is a tech industry veteran and has held leading roles in Ericsson, Lumentis, and Transmode and experienced a successful M&A and IPO. 

Orisdi is a leading vertically integrated e-commerce store in Iraq that offers buyers a convenient shopping experience for a wide range of products to distupt the Iraqi retail market. Orisdi is focused on multiple categories including perfumes, cosmetics, appliances, stationery and electronics, amongst others.

The Total Addressable Market (“TAM”) for e-commerce in Iraq has been growing rapidly on the back of a young population that is increasingly internet savvy. Statista estimates the TAM to be $5.667B in 2022 and is expected to grow to $8B over the coming three years. 

Ahmed Al Kiremli, the Founder & CEO of Orisdi, commented, “We plan to continue to focus on our winning categories as a vertically integrated e-commerce store and to offer only genuine brands”. He added that the company continues to be the most efficient e-commerce player in Iraq in terms of units of economics compared to its competitors through continuous learning and processes optimization and that the business is approaching the break-even point.

Mohsen Khairaldin Garica, Managing Director of Investments at Al Sharqiya Group and a member of the Iraqi Angel Investors Network, commented: "I believe we will soon see an increase in M&A opportunities in the Iraqi e-commerce market as ventures like Orisdi and its competitors mature. Mohammed Shaikley, one of the early and returning investors of Orisdi, added, “We are happy to see the rising interest and involvement of regional VCs in Iraq during the last 12 months. Iraq has a big potential as a tech market with an underserved population of over 42 million”.

Al Kiremli added:, “We were able to overcome an important milestone by completing the company registration at Abu Dhabi Global Markets (ADGM); this will provide a more attractive legal structure for regional and international VCs looking for exposure to Iraq's e-commerce future.” So If you are an angel investor or a VC interested in investing in the Iraqi tech ecosystem, Orisdi remains open to raising additional funds in order to facilitate the scaling of the company.

The investment has been facilitated by the Iraqi Angel Investors Network, an initiative by Kapita sponsored by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH via its project “ICT for Youth in Iraq”.

 

July 22nd 2022, 7:04 pm

Pan-African CAIF fund closes at $112.8 million

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Press release:

AfricInvest, a leading multi-asset investment platform in Africa and global venture capital firm Cathay Innovation, have completed the final close of their joint Pan-African Venture fund, Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund [CAIF], at €110 million ($112.8 million). The fund is backed by LPs such as EIB, AfricaGrow, FMO, Bpifrance, Triodos Investment Management, Proparco, SIFEM, BIO and, among others, as well as a diverse pool of globally renowned investors, including Development finance institutions, leading multinational corporations, and high-net-worth individuals across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

With the close of the fund, the CAIF team will significantly deepen their focus on investing in the most promising early to growth-stage startups improving African lives with disruptive tech-enabled products and services. With initial check sizes ranging from €1-10 million for growth-stage and up to €1 million for select Seed-stage tickets, the fund invests in startups across multiple sectors, including fintech, mobility, healthtech, edtech, AI, digital content and agritech. Since its inception in October 2019, CAIF has backed ten prominent companies operating across the continent, including 54gene, OZÉ, Migo, PalmPay, Heetch, KaiOS, Boomplay, Aerobotics, and WhereIsMyTransport. Most recently, the fund co-led Tunisia-based edtech startup GoMyCode’s $8 million Series A round.

“AfricInvest’s partnership with Cathay Innovation brings to Africa global expertise in the innovation space combined with a robust network in Europe, the US and Asia, all helping to build bridges between Africa and the rest of the world, allowing the fund’s investees to grow into regional and global champions,” said Yassine Oussaifi, Partner at AfricInvest and co-head of CAIF.

“As technology scales and brings massive upgrades to global populations, startups are critical in building the new digital infrastructure needed for emerging regions like Africa to redefine industries and society in the 21st century. We’re proud to partner with the AfricInvest team — connecting the entire African continent with tech hubs around the world — in a shared mission of accelerating the transition to a more digital, sustainable and inclusive economy for Africa and beyond,” added Mingpo Cai, founder and chairman of Cathay Capital and Cathay Innovation.

Since its launch in 1994, AfricInvest’s multi-strategy platform has actively contributed to strengthening the private equity and venture capital ecosystem in Africa. CAIF relies on AfricInvest’s rich investment expertise, its extensive pool of resources from its network and its physical presence across 11 regions through offices including Abidjan, Algier, Cairo, Casablanca, Lagos, Nairobi, and Tunis to provide local hands-on support, create synergies with portfolios and assist with geographic expansion. With over 200 portfolio companies across 25 African countries in a variety of high-growth sectors, of which 106 have exited, AfricInvest has, to date, raised over $2bn AUM across 21 funds and benefits from strong, long-term support from both African and international investors. 

Founded in 2015, Cathay Innovation is a leading venture capital firm providing entrepreneurs with the support of a global ecosystem across North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa. The global platform unifies technology investment across continents, investors, entrepreneurs and leading corporations to accelerate startup growth with access to new markets, invaluable industry knowledge and introductions to potential partners from the start. With over €2 billion in assets under management and offices across 3 continents, Cathay Innovation has a strong track record of over 120 global investments, including 19 unicorns, in startups accelerating industry and society's sustainable and digital transformation. 

CAIF enables promising ventures to build and scale innovative technologies that drive inclusive socio-economic growth in Africa. To date, the fund has proved tremendous traction and scalability with portfolio companies expanding their global footprint to over 21 markets across the continent. The Fund’s portfolio companies have also aggregated significant impact at scale in recent years with around 136 million Africans reached with inclusive and digital solutions–meaning $1 spent reaches more than one user on the continent. With its current portfolio, the Fund has created and sustained over 1,400 direct jobs, with women representing an average of 35% of the workforce. Deployed by a team of investment professionals located in the centres of VC innovation across Africa, the fund will continue to support African entrepreneurs to scale their innovative technologies across the continent and beyond, as well as support global entrepreneurs in their expansion into Africa.

“The Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund was born from the idea that innovative and tech-enabled startups in Africa are solving important problems and socio-economic gaps. We see this funding opportunity as a means to deliver strategic support to the outstanding startups looking to innovate and improve lives in Africa. Already, CAIF has reached over a hundred million people through job creation and inclusion. However, there are still millions across the continent with limited economic resources on our radar,” said Khaled Ben Jilani, Senior Partner at AfricInvest and co-head of CAIF.

The venture capital market in Africa has seen exponential growth over the last decade with the acceleration in digital transformation across all sectors. As a result, the industry is becoming the fastest-growing innovation ecosystem globally. In 2021, the ecosystem reached a new milestone of c.$5 billion in venture capital, more than the preceding two years combined and close to three times more than in 2020. As one of the largest early- to growth-stage Pan-African innovation funds, the final round places CAIF in a solid position to double down its efforts to focus on innovative and scalable post-revenue ventures based in, or with a focus on, Africa. As a result, CAIF will continue to firmly stand at the forefront of the continent’s rapidly evolving VC scene.

July 22nd 2022, 7:04 pm

Navigating the slippery slopes of uncertainty

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Rani Salman is the managing partner at Caliber Consulting, a UAE-based boutique consulting firm

As the evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin once said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.” Contextualising his theory to the current business environment, this level of change has reached a zenith in the past few years with unprecedented socio-economic, political, medical, and technological disruptions impacting the globe at large.

The recent global disruption brought on by Covid-19 caused most businesses to face a level of uncertainty they had never accounted for, putting them, and particularly startups, in a unique position. On one hand, startups can be more agile than their larger and heavier corporate counterparts, yet on the other hand, they often lack the deep pockets, experience, and resources needed to make power moves, especially during tough times.  Often, however, the real difference-maker boils down to critical decision-making and the levels of agility embedded in that organisation’s DNA.  

Although the onset of Covid-19 was an unprecedented phenomenon, out of everyone’s control, startups in a natural steady state struggle to deal with internal and external realities. Even In a stable economic environment, they are prone to financial instability because the business model is not yet typically concrete and funding could be dependent on investors and capital ventures. Having a playbook to navigate the business landscape is crucial for startups and can help them either sink or swim when uncertainty reveals itself.  

Uncertainty can be a blessing in disguise, as it offers opportunities for businesses to reimagine their strategies, business models, and operating models to gain competitive advantage and propel growth in customer share.

The playbook revolves around four key steps and guiding principles, which when adopted effectively, help, and increase an organisation’s chances for success.

  1. Sense: Ensure your organisation’s antennas are high-powered and can sense a change in internal and external environments. This entails building a capability to see around corners and signal to detect risks and opportunities before they unfold, or before it is too late.

  1. Strategise: Quickly frame the strategy and business model once a trigger for change has been sensed.  Business model innovation revolves around entering new customer segments, business lines, product categories, or value chain integration. A good example of this was the first mover gin makers in Europe who quickly set up new production lines for hand sanitising alcohol on the onset of Covid-19.

Another key component of strategising involves scenario planning and laying out the various potential strategic options that could unfold and how to tackle them.  Creating a playbook for each of the scenarios keeps the team prepared for once the uncertainty becomes a reality.

Furthermore, hedging risk is often a good approach and ensures all your eggs are not in one basket, by having a diversification strategy focusing on multiple customer segments, business lines, and/or channels.

We can see the example of Airbnb, the decision-makers mobilised the product and took it to different customers in different regions, hence globalising efforts made Airbnb a tourism giant. This way when one market is unprofitable there are other channels that help sales and grow brand identity. Airbnb made a crucial decision to use the online platform to connect with customers and give them a comfortable traveling experience.

  1.  Select: Place your strategic bets and begin mobilising and implementing the needed strategic changes. However, in a world of uncertainty and dynamism, the implementation cannot be with a “big bang,” approach, and it is preferable to take a pilot, test, learned, adapt, and scale approach.    

Take for example Groupon, a feature in the startup app originally called ‘The Pointe’ which was essentially a crowdfunding site that allowed users to raise money to support causes that resonated with them; however, the website saw more traffic being generated by ‘Groupon’ than any other feature. The management took a decision to pivot when they realised the business was making a loss and launched Groupon as a standalone business venture.

Moreover, Snap bar, a small business that offered on-ground event services was particularly hit by the lockdown, however, they were quick to pivot and launched themselves as a gift box company that collaborated with local businesses. Snap bar is one example of a company changing quickly and adapting to the current environment. The lesson to be learned here is that management needs to strike strategic partnerships to build a sustainable business model when the opportunity arises.

  1. Sustain: Build true agility into your DNA by injecting it into all parts of your operating model i.e., the key components of your organisation like structure, people, management systems, technology, and most importantly culture.  Once your operating model is agile, this gives you a supreme advantage in adapting to uncertainty.  

 

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Globally there is a pall of uncertainty brought on by the political unrest in the West, due to this, many startup CEOs must adopt a conservative approach to get through a tough financial crunch. Startups rely on funding especially for the first few years until the business model starts generating steady profits. To ensure the business does not run out of money, startups can shift to the cash preservation approach, to make sure that the company survives until new and better fundraising opportunities arise. Tough but crucial decisions include: 

  1. Halting investments in new projects/products and services may have to be undertaken along with hitting a pause on expansion into new markets. 

  2. Dropping marketing and advertising costs, especially for on-ground initiatives which require a handsome monetary budget. Companies should consider moving to digital advertisements and leverage strategic partnerships that will help build the online presence and brand identity of the company (consider barter transactions). 

  3. Startups have a great opportunity to build an online presence and move away from the traditional ‘brick and mortar’ business setup – this saves costs of rents and utilities as well as allows companies to expand their geographical presence.

  4. Cultivating a culture of honesty and transparency in tough times is crucial as leadership will have to adopt efficient policies that minimise time wastage and give stricter targets which must be achieved in a shorter time frame. 

  5. Considering the option of paying for services with shares which will help with the current cash flow, this approach can also be taken to pay key employee salaries.

  6. Reworking job roles in the company and identifying vacant positions that do not need to be filled and allocating that budget elsewhere. 

  7. Last and perhaps the least favourable approach would be to strategise the company for downsizing and redesigning the organisational structure. 

Whether it is geo-political crises, global viruses, economic recessions, or other less significant changes; uncertainty now has become the norm.  Startups are in a unique position to flourish in this new normal as they can often be quicker to adapt and pivot. However, a playbook and guiding principles should be kept in mind for ultimate success.

 

July 22nd 2022, 7:04 pm

Sudanese fintech Bloom raises $6.5 million Seed round

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Source: TechCrunch

Bloom, a Sudan-based fintech that offers a high-yield savings account and adjacent digital banking services, has raised a $6.5 million seed round. This investment is coming after the startup’s undisclosed pre-seed round last year.

This financing welcomed participation from fintech giant Visa, Y Combinator, U.S.-based VCs Global Founders Capital (GFC) and Goodwater Capital and UAE-based early-stage firm VentureSouq. Other investors include angels Arash Ferdowsi, Dropbox co-founder; Nicolas Kopp, former U.S. CEO of N26; footballers Blaise Matuidi and Kieran Gibbs; and early employees at Revolut and Tide.

The investment from Visa came as one of the incentives for Bloom’s participation in the global card scheme’s Fintech Fast Track Program. A partnership was formed, and as a result, Bloom — the first Sudanese startup to get admitted into the program — switched its cards from Mastercard to Visa.

“The Visa investment is critical for companies like us for a couple of reasons. One, aligning with Visa as a partner gives you a bunch of benefits, launching products faster, marketing support and product support; and two, in addition to the investment, Visa Fintech Fast Track enables you to access these incentives in a streamlined way,” CEO Ahmed Ismail told TechCrunch in an interview.

In March, the company announced that it was a part of Y Combinator’s winter batch this year after launching from stealth that same month. Also, Bloom’s waitlist was made public in March, and at the time, the company had more than 15,000 people signed up; that number has topped 100,000, the founders told TechCrunch. They say the platform has been launched in Sudan but declined to give specific numbers of customers actively using the product.

As highlighted this March and reiterated in the interview, Bloom’s founders say this seed round will help the Sudanese- and Dubai-based startup - execute its expansion plan across the Anglo-East African region such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia. A few competitors in the region include YC-backed Fingo, Koa and Finclusion.

“Our product is live in Sudan. The plan is to scale in the country and then expand to other markets,” Ismail stated. “We anticipate being in at least one market before the end of the year and a couple more early next year.”

Bloom’s seed round is the largest in Sudan, a country whose tech ecosystem can be termed passive and only recently welcomed foreign investment when Fawry backed fintech and e-commerce player Alsoug after 30 years of international sanctions on the country.

East Africa, as a region, is home to 500 million people, with a median age of 18 and a fast-growing middle class. But the region’s currencies, including the Sudanese pound, are volatile and depreciate 15% to 20% per annum on average. This volatility is one of the biggest impediments to wealth protection and creation for this middle class, which is why Ismail and other co-founders Youcef Oudjidane, Khalid Keenan and Abdigani Diriye launched the fintech: to help Sudanese individuals hedge against this rising devaluation.

Bloom offers fee-free accounts for users to save in dollars and buy and spend in Sudanese pounds. It also provides local and dollar cards and a feature where they can receive remittance free of charge from several countries globally, mainly where most of the Sudanese diaspora reside. The fintech works with the Export Development Bank, a partner bank that handles deposits. Bloom makes revenue from interest on these deposits, the interchange and other ancillary streams.

Executives at Bloom and Visa say this investment and partnership can exponentially drive the adoption of Visa cards in Sudan and East Africa. In addition, Visa’s suite of products and services will provide customers with a secure and fast way to make online payments, according to Ahmed Mohey, Visa country general manager for Sudan and Libya.

“Visa is taking the lead as a first mover in digital payments in Sudan. We are committed to being a part of Sudan’s economic transformation by bringing our global expertise and capabilities to its government and private-sector partners. Together with Bloom, we will continue to drive acceptance of digital payments while finding opportunities to launch new products and services to Sudanese customers and merchants,” Mohey added.

Roel Janssen, a partner at Global Founders Capital, shares similar sentiment about the team: “We are very excited by our investment in Bloom. Its experienced and talented founding team has the drive and expertise to build a product that is universally valued by consumers, partners and regulators in Sudan and the wider East Africa region.”

July 22nd 2022, 7:04 pm

Mohamed El-Sewedy acquires Magma via Averroes Ventures

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Egypt-based Magma, a manufacturer of sportswear, has been fully acquired by its incumbent CEO Mohamed El-Sewedy via venture capital firm Averroes Ventures.

Launched in 2018, Magma is a sportswear brand that specialises in making an athletic mesh fabric with moisture management and anti-microbial qualities. 

Press release

Magma, one of the promising Egyptian sportswear manufacturers, announced its acquisition spearheaded by Averroes Ventures and led by its Chairman, Mohamed El-Sewedy, to meet the needs of an untapped segment of the Egyptian market. Leveraging on its unique technology that represents the core of all its products, Magma offers a distinctive value proposition as a local manufacturer with global potential. The new strategic investments will significantly change the quality of its products, and their presence in the local and regional market.

Magma is amongst the first Egyptian brands to offer high-quality sportswear that inspires and empowers athletes and consumers, and that can compete globally. The production process includes the latest technology, and an advanced R&D department that works on developing fabrics. The company was one of the first movers to use this technology, where it is engineered to enhance performance with fabric featuring breathability, antibacterial properties, odor resistance, fast drying & sweat-wicking properties.

Commenting on the acquisition, Mohamed El-Sewedy, Magma’s Chairman, said, "We have made great progress, and have very optimistic plans after the acquisition of Magma, including regional expansion in the Middle East and Gulf region very soon, as well as the opening of a leading state-of-the-art store in Egypt in 2023. These are significant milestones in the company's journey. I expect Magma will become a leading global sportswear brand in the region, by investing in product materials and textiles based on the latest technology, as well as the latest know-how in e-commerce. We also aim to diversify and develop products and designs by top designers to meet modern market demand for high quality, contributing to a booming economy that encourages local manufacturing and exports to other markets."

Dr. Ahmed Alsharif, Co-founder and CEO Averroes Ventures added, "We believe in the growth potential of native brands and designs accompanied by cutting edge technologies together with the growing demand of e-commerce, creating a winning formula for Magma. The new investments and the management team are well capable of transforming this company to a global player in the growing sector of sportswear and athleisure." Moreover, Averroes Venture invests and supports early-stage startups and SMEs operating in the logistics technology, food, Agritech and e-commerce industries in Egypt and the MENA region.”

Also commenting, Amr Abu Ali, CEO of Magma, "The company’s acquisition spearheaded by Averroes Ventures, and led by Mohamed El-Sewedy is an important step in Magma's history, for his great reputation and confidence in the Egyptian and regional economy. Increasing Magma’s product offering to meet the demand of new market segments, is an important decision we made, and this includes increasing functional sports and athleisure clothing lines for men and women, designed for daily exercise and wear, with future plans to introduce teamwear, beachwear, accessories, footwear, and a kids’ collection.”

Magma Sportswear had started online, and recently expanded its retail business through well-known outlets such as Debenhams. Magma also benefits from a very strong team experienced in the e-commerce sector.

July 22nd 2022, 7:04 pm

DeFi platform ZKX raises $4.5 million Seed round

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Source: Business Insider

Dubai-based DeFi platform ZKX raised $4.5 million in seed funding today from StarkWare, Alameda Research, Amber Group, Huobi, Crypto.com and others.

The decentralised finance platform helps make faster transactions and keeps gas fees low, and is built on StarkNet. These funds were raised in spite of a cryptocrash in particular and funding winter in general.

“The downturn is driven by the Federal Reserve tightening interest rates and driving de-risking across asset classes. Alameda, Crypto.com, and our other partners have been actively fostering and building the Web3 ecosystem for years. This should only strengthen the ecosystem in the long run by cleaning up the bad apples and focusing on the strongest players,” said Eduard Jubany Tur, Founder at ZKX.

The funding will go towards further development of its open-source protocol, DAO funding and growth of the ZXK ecosystem.

ZKX was founded in 2021 by Eduard Jubany Tur, Naman Sehgal, and Vitaly Yakovlev. The team has hired from Flipkart, PayTM, and Byju’s, with decades of shared experience in venture building and scaling technology startups in over eight countries.

It had earlier received investment from Sandeep Nailwal, co-Founder, Polygon, and Ashwin Ramachandran, General Partner, DragonFly Capital.

The platform aims to address some of the key challenges of the DeFi market, such as over-reliance on centralized entities, scalability, high gas fees for traders and painful user experience.

“We are determined to build an exchange that breaks down the barriers to using DeFi by building a protocol that enables trading derivatives of assets on StarkNet. Our goal is to expand our reach across emerging markets, enabling users to have fair representation within a DAO,” said Jubany.

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July 22nd 2022, 7:04 pm

Stllr Network raises six-figure investment round

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Press release:

Stllr Network closed a six-figure investment amount after a public beta launch from 500 Global, angel investors through Women Spark and Falak Angels. The list of investors includes backers from the KSA Ministry of Investment, ex-Microsoft and Oracle leaders, Accenture, Emkan and the Digital Cooperation Organisation. 

A company on average outsources up to 40% of its marketing budget. Stllr reduces wasted costs in marketing departments, and miscommunication with external vendors and gives companies a plug-and-play marketing model through experimenting with different campaigns like SEO, media buying, social media and more.

CEO Nouran Ghannam comments “there is an untapped potential of teams in the marketing industry, but the best teams are formed on their own through the network. This model is the first of its kind in the world, and only in a community-based region like ours, is it the best place to start. 34% of all experts in the network come through referrals by someone already in the network. They can build and manage their own teams through Stllr’s technology. It’s social. We doubled our talent pool in 2022 just through the network.” 

Stllr Network aspires to be MENA’s largest network of vetted marketing talent who are nominated to projects, introduced to others and access to larger projects and enterprises, unlike traditional freelancing. 

Their beta customers include a pilot with Zid and TikTok MENA, Hesas Misr, a semi-governmental initiative by almentor, Ministry of Education and Nagwa, Grinta, a collaboration with Zid and TikTok,  as well as various e-commerce stores, in Egypt and KSA. Stllr experts have success stories achieving over 1M in sales for one, and 5x monthly orders for another.

Stllr Network launched Packages for partners, giving businesses access to quick marketing deliverables with fast checkouts like company profiles or designs.

Nouran adds, “Stllr Academy wouldn’t have been possible without the support of Tanmia W Tatweer, a grant by the Arab Development Bank. We can scout talent from Stllr Academy with the network’s quality at our core.”

Stllr Network’s public beta was launched on 8th December with a rooftop launch party exclusively for its community, partners and experts. The fresh funds will be used to invest in acquiring local talents, decentralising the network and regional expansion across KSA and the GCC.

July 22nd 2022, 7:04 pm

Has the buy now pay later slump reached Mena?

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The hype around buy now pay later (BNPL) around the world has waned. Sweden’s Klarna, which last year was Europe’s most valuable fintech startup slashed its valuation from $46 billion to just $6.7 billion in its last funding round and cut its workforce by 10 per cent.  Australia’s Zip has seen its share price fall by 90 per cent over the past year and terminated its merger with Sezzle over macroeconomic conditions while US-based Affirm also saw its share price falter after Apple announced its own BNPL offering.

The rise in the cost of living and high inflation has dented consumer spending, resulting in concerns that those who do opt to purchase goods through BNPL, will not be able to maintain their payments. Regulators have also focused their attention on BNPL companies, demanding greater transparency and better affordability checks on customers.

In the Middle East and North Africa (Mena), this sentiment is not quite yet as potent. When the first few players emerged, they provided a unique offering to the market, a form of credit in a region where consumers have limited payment options.

Take up of BNPL in the region has skyrocketed, so much so that “people cannot imagine a checkout page without it”, according to Abdulmajeed Alsukhan, co-founder and CEO of Saudi Arabia-based Tamara.

“The market has been underserved for a long time, we have a unique case in the GCC where most banks have focused on corporate banking. Most of the banks were reluctant to give loans unless you worked for the public sector. They would make it very, very hard for you to access simple, small amounts [of credit],” he adds.

In the wake of the lockdowns and rise in online shopping, BNPL became a way for consumers to manage their expenses amid rising economic uncertainty and job insecurity. 

“I believe this region has now officially embraced BNPL,” says Alsukhan, adding that it has become the main payment option for 80 per cent of consumers at checkout, while research from checkout.com suggests that 50 per cent of all Mena will use BNPL this year. 

Overhyped

But for Hosam Arab, founder and CEO of UAE-based Tabby, buy now pay later has been “grossly overhyped. There has been way too much attention on the sector”.

BNPL startups were the “poster child” of fintech startups when they first emerged in the region, securing some of the biggest investment rounds in 2021 with startups in this segment raising in excess of $232 million. But as the war in Ukraine has pushed up food prices and sent inflation rates soaring, investors have become hesitant, adopting a wait-and-see approach. 

“The public markets are not looking good, tech as a whole has taken a hit, payments has taken a larger hit and BNPL has taken an even larger hit. Twelve months ago, they were the biggest gainers, but some normalisation is happening now. It’s become extremely competitive, largely driven around the hype. Some of this hype needs to die down and bring the sector back to earth,” says Arab.

So far this year, investment in BNPL startups and other fintechs that offer BNPL exceeded $100 million.

“Given the fact that markets have cooled, investor sentiment has also cooled. We will see a decent amount of consolidation in this space, players will find it difficult to raise capital to scale, it is very capital intensive to scale,” says Arab, who in March closed a $54 million Series B round led by Sequoia Capital India and STV.

Regionally, BNPL has become a “quick race to the bottom on pricing”, according to Arab who adds: “We all monetise via the merchant and merchants realise their importance to the equation and they can drive down pricing.”

This is why a few startups in the region have adopted different business models, to prevent such a heavy reliance on merchants and investors. 

For UAE-based Cashew, partnering with Mashreq bank has eliminated the need to seek out other investors. The startup, which pivoted from providing banking software to BNPL, partnered with Mashreq which invested $10 million, to launch its services through a revenue sharing model.

“The banks have been operating in this market for decades, there is something to learn from their experience, we’re stronger if we combine their expertise. Our business model is providing tech, we manage the end to end user onboarding. We prefer to partner with the bank for the balance sheet, so we make sure we never run out of banks,” says Ibtissam Ouassif, co-founder of Cashew.

Banks cannot provide BNPL in a seamless manner according to Ouassif. “If they could, they would have done it already. It’s not about the skillset, it’s about compliance and regulations. BNPL or fintech can move faster, that’s the strong suit, it’s the tech itself and the maintenance of the whole journey,” she says.

Meanwhile in Egypt, the largest BNPL market after the UAE and Saudi Arabia, one fintech is offering a “save now, pay later” model, where customers pay LE100 upfront for the option of paying in instalments. The founders, who previously worked at ValU, the BNPL offering from investment bank EFG Hermes, describe Sympl as an “evolution” of ValU. 

“We have noticed the market is influenced and controlled by the purchasing power of the people who already have funds and liquidity in their accounts,” says Mohamed El-Shabrawy El-Feky, co-founder and CEO of Sympl. “The percentage of the needy people or credit hungry people, those are the segments that all the financial institutions are competing for.”

The journey for Sympl, which last year raised $6 million, starts at the checkout, cutting back the need for marketing costs. 

“We approach them at checkout while they’re already paying for products or services they need and we give them a pay later option – save your money and pay later. If you’re charging the first instalment upfront, it’s 25 per cent of how much the customer has in their account and it is not aligned with the saving plan we want to promote,” says El-Feky.

Offering more

Given the popularity of paying in instalments, other payments companies have also launched their own BNPL offerings in Mena, including Visa and Amazon Payment Services. 

Amid the rise in competition, there is growing pressure to diversify what BNPL offers. Tabby is launching its BNPL Visa card, which will automatically allow customers to pay for goods in four instalments in brick and mortar shops listed on Tabby's platform.

“If you look at BNPL as purely a payment method at checkout, it becomes commoditised,” says Arab.To avoid this commoditisation, Tabby has introduced a cashback loyalty programme for its customers who can ascertain benefits beyond splitting payments.

Meanwhile Tamara’s Alsukhan claims his company is “going beyond BNPL”, and focusing on the overall online shopping experience."We are innovating in the discovery space, making sure you get what you need at a price you like.”

Analysing global BNPL trends can give us some insight into what might happen in the region.

“The trends are obviously increasing the product offering, consumers and merchant partners want six or 12 months repayment plans, you can do that if you have the balance sheet,” says Ouassif. “We see this trend in the US and Europe, where you offer longer tenure and when you do, you increase the ticket size and you can go into other sectors beyond fashion and retail.”

Regionally, BNPL has expanded to healthcare, education, insurance and the automotive sector.

“BNPL has taken over the e-commerce space, now we’re getting out of that landscape a bit and consumers have gone back to the stores and malls,” says Ouassif. “Retailers are asking for the solution to be in stores as well.”

The business of BNPL

In the quest to differentiate and offer both customers and merchants more than just an alternative payment method, some BNPL players are looking at the B2B segment. In Saudi Arabia, Afundy, launched in May 2021 as a Shariah-compliant, B2B BNPL fintech, offers a form of trade financing for e-commerce businesses. It purchases their stock and resells it to the online retailer who pays for it in instalments with a flat fee rate of 5 to 15 per cent.

Afundy’s technology analyses the seller’s revenue patterns and sales and marketing patterns to decide the credit-worthiness of the retailer and caters its offerings according to that.

“It is very practical and accessible, they [retailers] can integrate their accounts efficiently and get funding in three days, as opposed to banks who require two years’ of audited financial statements. They have to put in a lot of documentation that might take a few weeks or months,” says Mohammed Sabbagh, co-founder and CEO of Afundy.

Typically,e-commerce traders purchase their own stock and store it in warehouses, whether their own or one that is leased.Through a player like Afundy, “the trader doesn’t need to worry about inventory, logistics or funding. They can focus on selling online and that’s how we help them grow”, says Sabbagh.

Globally, default rates for BNPL rise alongside their popularity. A survey of the 40 per cent of Americans who had used BNPL, showed that more than a third had missed a payment while Klarna’s rate of delinquencies doubled last year. While this has resulted in millions of lost and delayed payments, the risk in the B2B space is substantially higher according to Sabbagh.

“The risk is higher in the [B2B] space, funding small businesses who have much higher chances of collapse,” he says. But given that Afundy’s model is a revenue-based form of financing, the risk is somewhat lower.

“Having access to their revenue stream, we know their data which helps us forecast what their revenue will be tomorrow, so it mitigates our risk by 99 per cent as opposed to banks who look at historical data,” says Sabbagh.

Afundy is not alone in pinning its hopes on the B2B sector. UAE-based Toggle, a B2B marketplace for the restaurant and hospitality sector has also ventured into the BNPL space by partnering with underwriters and private creditors to facilitate its financing services to its customers. Toggle Market uses credit risk modelling and banking data to offer B2B customers flexible financing solutions including up to 365 days trade credit.

Farther afield, the likes of Germany’s Mondu and Billie and UK-based Playter have attracted significant investment for their B2B BNPL offerings as valuations for the B2C players suffer.

But while investors may feel more comfortable with the B2B-focused startups, competition will likely stiffen, particularly as more B2B marketplaces offer their own BNPL offerings while the global macroeconomic uncertainty will no doubt hit this segment too. 

Carving out a niche amid the competition will become the key focus of all BNPL players in the region. At a time when “super apps” have gained traction, we will likely see BNPL fintechs offer a fuller suite of products in order to retain customers, which will make way for more exits and consolidation. 

July 22nd 2022, 7:04 pm

African growth promise tempts investors

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By Joseph Cotterill

A list of Africa’s fastest-growing companies that is topped by Kenyan tech disrupters, South African platinum miners and Nigerian commodity traders makes one thing clear: the businesses thriving in the continent’s major economies are as diverse as they come.

This inaugural FT ranking, compiled with data company Statista and based on compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in revenues from 2017 to 2020, reflects big themes across African markets, both old and new.

Miners owe their place to a traditional tailwind for African corporate growth: booming commodities. But their presence also reveals that African producers are at the forefront of enabling new clean technologies around the world — demand for catalytic converters for cars, for example, has contributed to the run-up in platinum prices that has driven revenues in recent years.

But the list is characterised far more by startups, such as the frontrunner, Kenya’s Wasoko, that are tailoring the internet’s worldwide disruption of business models to classic African sectors, such as informal trade. In 2017, about a fifth of sub-Saharan Africa’s population was online. By 2020, that had risen to just under a third, according to the World Bank.

While the ranking does not extend beyond revenue growth to the cost of sales, or to profitability, Africa’s markets represent a more battle-hardened environment for fast-growing companies than other regions.

When raising funds, African startup founders often say that they face greater pressure to show a path to profit earlier than companies in other parts of the world because their markets are considered less familiar to international investors.

And they are clearly doing so, as venture capitalists and other investors are coming to African markets with bigger cheque books than ever before. Evidence suggests more capital is finding its way to start-ups at later stages, when they are already approaching significant scale.

Last year marked an explosion in funding for fintech, in particular. African startups raised about $5 billion in private markets, notably in venture capital, in 2021, according to data and estimates from the African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (AVCA), an investor representative group, and Briter Bridges, a research firm.

While that was a sliver of the $600 billion raised worldwide, it was more fundraising than had been achieved on the continent in the previous seven years combined, according to AVCA.

By the number of deals, the more than 600 transactions recorded by the body last year were nearly 10 times 2014’s total.

More than a dozen companies raised $100 million or more in 2021, compared with three in 2019 — supporting the idea that increasing amounts of capital are reaching startups when they are already nearing notable scale.

Almost all could be classed as fintech, and some, such as Flutterwave and Opay, both Nigeria-based digital payment companies, broke through to “unicorn” billion-dollar valuations with these funding rounds.

Wasoko, the top company in this ranking, came close to joining them. It raised $125 million, at a valuation of $625 million (although the company was ranked on CAGR to 2020). Opay’s $400 million round alone was larger than the entire African startup market’s fundraising in 2017.

However, even with this recent surge in investment, “there remains too little capital and talent, when compared to the strong demand for both from the many entrepreneurs building the next generation of world class African companies,” according to the AVCA.

One emerging talent bottleneck for high-growth African startups is the number of professional software developers on the continent, which has been estimated by Google at about 716,000, nearly half of whom are in Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. The average age of these developers, at 29, is younger than the global average of 36. One-third are under 25.

At the current rate of venture capital dealmaking, it is a fair bet that next year’s list will feature many more tech groups. But the ranking also reflects how capital markets beyond Africa have been swayed by companies from the continent. Revenue growth at South Africa’s Naspers (number 37 on this list and the continent’s biggest company by market capitalisation) reflects its stake of just under a third in China’s Tencent, and other international internet assets that are now housed in Prosus, its European investment vehicle that was created in 2019.

A few rungs up the list is IHS Towers, the continent’s biggest independent mobile phone mast operator, benefiting from a boom in the infrastructure needed for Africa’s surging internet use. IHS listed in New York last year in the biggest initial public offering by an African company on US markets.

Especially striking is heavy representation for South African miners of platinum group metals, of which the country is a large world supplier, including Northam, Royal Bafokeng and Anglo American Platinum.

That reflects the nature of a revenue-based growth ranking — miner sales in recent years have been boosted by surging platinum prices and depreciation of the South African rand, in which many costs are priced, relative to the US dollar.

It is a volatile mix. In 2020, the last year used for this ranking, the average platinum price was $885 per ounce — but this concealed highs of about $1,070 and lows of around $605. Palladium prices were just as wild, ricocheting between $2,800 and $1,600 per ounce beneath a 2020 average of $2,200.

Even though analysts point to signs of a maturing cycle, such as rising costs, mining executives insist that long-term demand for platinum is here to stay, given lack of supply and the requirement for the metal in clean energy technologies — producing fuel cells, for example.

“There is a systemic global primary supply problem, and it boils down to the scarcity of new mining projects to replace the depleting profiles of currently operating, mature mines,” said Paul Dunne, Northam’s chief executive, in March.

The platinum mining boom also shows that, while the ranking methodology stresses that it is tilted to “primarily organic” growth, expansion through acquisitions is important, too. In recent months, Northam has built a stake of around a third in Royal Bafokeng during a bid battle with Impala Platinum, another miner. Sibanye-Stillwater, a South African platinum miner that is not on this list, tripled revenues from 2018 to last year as it made deals including an entry into battery metals.

M&A-driven growth could also become part of the lifeblood of Africa’s biggest fintech startups, both on and off this ranking.

MFS Africa, a South Africa-based digital payments gateway, pulled off one of last year’s $100 million-plus fundraising deals. It has also been highly involved in pan-African M&A, making two large acquisitions to expand in both west and east Africa, as well as three minority investments, over 2020 and 2021.

Deals such as those by MFS “are critical building blocks in building an expansive fintech infrastructure business on the continent”, because of the importance of scale in payments, Renaissance Capital analysts said last month.

“We think the trend of consolidations in the ecosystem is likely to continue, spurred on by access to venture funding, with fintech companies leading the charge,” they added.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2022

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July 5th 2022, 9:37 pm

UAE's LYVE acquires majority stake in Jeebly

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Press release 

Lyve Global is a B2B logistics SaaS platform founded in the UAE, enabling businesses to digitize their customer journey from order to payment to delivery. The company has recently acquired a majority stake in Jeebly, a leading UAE-based last mile delivery and logistics company.

Lyve’s acquisition of a majority stake in Jeebly marks a significant step as part of the company’s new investment strategy, which aims to expand its offerings and market reach. 

Lyve has flourished since its inception in 2016, evolving into an end-to-end solutions provider. The company now uses cloud-based platforms and services to help facilitate hundreds of millions of orders every month on behalf of leading brands across the e-commerce, food and beverage, grocery, and healthcare industries.

By leveraging Lyve’s rich network, the acquisition will help to further accelerate Jeebly’s growth in its existing markets while also strengthening its operational capabilities to offer unique delivery solutions across the GCC.

Chief Investment Officer at Lyve, Nader Museitif, commented on the strategic investment: “This is an exciting time for us. In less than 12 months we have concluded 4 acquisitions. We have ambitious plans for the coming two years with total investment value reaching over $150 million.  Jeebly has been an exceptional success story and we’re happy to be working together on the next stage of the journey.  This is one of several investments that will complement our offering and we will be actively looking to acquire companies that add to our spectrum of services.”

Jeebly has experienced fast growth since it was first established in 2016 by Raman Pathak and Ram Parashar, with the help of their main investor, Axeed. In just 6 years, the company has onboarded more than 500 key global and regional clients across multiple industries. With this latest investment, Jeebly is well on track to accelerate its growth.

Raman Pathak, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Jeebly said: “We are excited to welcome Lyve Global as our growth partner. This is an alliance that is set to strengthen our proposition and create unique synergies that will benefit our customers. Together, we will be more resilient and prepared for future opportunities”.

Abdulla Al Shaibani, Chief Executive Officer, Axeed LLC also commented on the partnership: “Lyve Global and Jeebly joining hands is an excellent strategic development that benefits all parties involved. We at Axeed have always believed in Jeebly's potential and will continue to actively support this partnership."

With the rapid rise of e-commerce in the region, companies are focused on developing strategies that enhance online trade. Lyve’s solutions play a pivotal role in empowering such companies to thrive in the digital landscape, having successfully expanded its offerings to cover order generation and management, payments, and delivery across 20 markets. With this growth comes the desire to continuously refine and advance its services, backed by major regional investors and institutions.

July 5th 2022, 9:37 pm
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