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Perihan Abouzeid, founder of PeriCare nursing pods

Perihan Abouzeid set up PeriCare, a Dubai-based company focused on building products that serve the needs of working mothers and mothers on the go. It became a revenue-generating startup within the first month of operations and has featured at major events like Gitex and Dubai Design Week. What does your company do? Our flagship product […]

Movie star Leonardo DiCaprio has largely focused on films about the environment for the past decade

Di Caprio-backed fintech to set up offices in Abu Dhabi

California-based fintech company Aspiration Inc. will be setting up offices at Abu Dhabi Global Market. Aspiration is supported by Access Abu Dhabi, the business expansion program by Maven Global Access and Abu Dhabi Investment Office (ADIO), which serves as a conduit to fast-track entry to the UAE capital, the company said in a statement.  The […]

Investors are increasingly interested in startups aiming to improve, expand and optimise the agricultural and food industries

Agtech startups and Egypt are hot prospects for Mena funding

Startups across the Middle East and North Africa region raised $125 million in funding in December last year, with Egyptian companies leading the pack, ahead of regional powerhouses the UAE and Saudi Arabia. A joint report by Wamda and Digital Digest showed that Egyptian startups secured $45.7 million across 11 deals in December, more than […]

Abdallah Abu Sheikh, founder of Astra Tech, wants to set "a global benchmark of what an ultra-app should look like"

Dubai ‘ultra app’ acquires Botim ahead of $800m launch

Astra Tech, the Dubai-based technology firm, has bought voice calling platform Botim and intends to incorporate it into the “ultra app” it aims to launch later this year. Botim, which was founded in 2018 and also has its headquarters in Dubai, is a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) app that allows users across the Middle […]

Nitish Mittal and Turki Al Shaikh, founders of social investing platform InvestSky, aim to use VC funding to make investing more inclusive across the GCC

New investor app taps Gulf’s appetite for stocks and shares

InvestSky, a social investing platform, has raised $3.4 million in a pre-seed funding round led by venture capital fund Emkan Capital.  The Dubai startup aims to use the cash to make investing more inclusive for a “new generation of investors in the GCC”, it said.  InvestSky’s commission-free platform is aimed at retail investors – non-professional […]

Laptop, Pc, Computer

New UAE partnership to cut red tape of business bank accounts

Opening a bank account is listed as “the biggest hurdle” entrepreneurs and business founders face in the UAE, but a new scheme is aiming to address this. A report last year by identity verification platform IDnow Middle East, which surveyed more than 1,000 people, found that nine out of 10 UAE respondents think it takes […]

UAE-based Fintech Galaxy acquires Egypt’s Underlie

UAE-based Fintech Galaxy has acquired Underlie, an Egypt-based open banking platform offering application programming interfaces (APIs) to banks and businesses.  The deal will help set up the company’s open finance and banking across the region, develop and launch new digital solutions and push financial inclusion forward. No financial details were given. Egypt is quickly becoming […]

Israeli startup makes inroads with personal flying vehicle

An Israeli-made electric vehicle designed to fly commuters on short trips far above streets overcrowded with cars has made its maiden unmanned flight, a milestone the developer says will help it reach the market in the next two years. The test-phase voyage may not look out of the ordinary at first given the huge progress […]

Spice Girl Emma Bunton co-founded mother and baby brand Kit & Kin

You’ve come a long way, Baby – female-led startups land in Gulf

Women in the UK are launching their own businesses at a record rate. In 2018, 56,200 female-led startups were established in Britain. Three years later, the number had soared to 145,200, according to the 2022 Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship. One of the key beneficiaries of this rapid growth is the Gulf, as UK […]

Oryx Law

British lawyers aim to shake up Gulf legal sector

Oryx Law, a British legal startup aiming to shake up the Gulf legal industry with the introduction of a new business model, has handled deals of around $1 billion for 30 clients in its first quarter of operation. The company was established by Natalie Boyd in the UK in 2018, where she mainly worked with […]

Cyprus watchdog to extend FTX EU licence suspension

Cyprus’s securities regulator plans to extend the suspension of the licence of FTX EU and will meet to discuss the matter next week, a spokesperson said on Tuesday. “CySEC is taking all the necessary actions to safeguard the interests of investors of FTX EU and is working closely with the administrator in the US under […]

Venture capitalists flock to fund DeFi and Web3 startups

Decentralised finance (DeFi) and Web3 were the primary targets of early-stage startup funding from some of the top private investors in the third quarter, research firm Pitchbook said on Tuesday, even as overall venture capital investments declined. Web3 – a term used to describe a potential next phase of the internet – firms that were […]

More people are choosing to rent cars since the cost of fuel began to rise

Invygo, Gulf’s largest car subscription startup, raises $10m

Invygo, the Gulf’s first car subscription operator, has secured $10 million in new funding, endorsing a trend for businesses to opt for renting over ownership. Headquartered in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Invygo is an app-based service that allows people to choose, drive and swap cars. Founded in 2019, the new funding was led by […]

Person, Human, Monitor

Cairo is the tech hub of Africa – and it’s just getting started

Almost 20 percent of African tech startups are based in Egypt, and the vast majority in its sprawling capital of 10 million inhabitants. Egypt is Africa’s tech hub and Cairo is its heart. According to Access Partnership, a public policy consultancy focused on technology, more than a third of Egypt’s startups have benefited from national […]

MENA startup valuations take a hit as funding tightens

Funding for startups in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has continued to decline this year, in line with global trends, but industry experts remain optimistic that the end of the year will see a resurgence. The tightening of cash has also meant investors are looking for increasingly bigger stakes, resulting in startup valuations […]

Mexican used-car startup to invest $130m expanding to the Gulf

Mexican online used-car dealership Kavak has expanded to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Oman and Saudi Arabia, boosting its presence in emerging-market countries, the firm’s chief executive, Carlos Garcia, told Reuters on Tuesday. Kavak plans to invest $130 million over the next two years in the three Middle-Eastern countries, which are set to represent seven […]

  • Analysis

Venture builder launches new $200m fund in Abu Dhabi

Further, a new venture building and investment firm in Abu Dhabi, has launched a $200 million fund dedicated to co-creating ventures focused on digital assets, fintech and supply chain.  Backed by ADQ, an Abu Dhabi-based investment and holding company, Further seeks to partner with entrepreneurs as an institutional co-founder to launch and grow new ventures. […]

Samples of rice and lentils for sale at a wholesale market in Delhi

Tech startup aims to spice up India’s agriculture trade with GCC

Indian startup Ninjacart has launched Ninja Global, a new digital platform for agricultural export-import businesses in the UAE and other countries in the Gulf. Ninjacart operates in over 150 markets across agri-commodities, was valued at almost $1bn this year, and is backed by retail giant Walmart and India’s Tiger Global among others. Its Ninja Global is […]

UAE experts warn investors about ‘under-regulated fintech’

Financial technology (fintech) startups have been big business for investors and consumers in the UAE, but experts have raised concerns about whether they are under-regulated. Fintech startup funding saw steep growth in the UAE in the first half of this year, accounting for a third of all deals, well above the Middle East and North […]

Startup exits escalate in UAE

The UAE is seeing an increase in startup exits this year, as the market matures while bigger players look to acquisitions to scale up their operations. The UAE Venture Investment Report, by research firm Magnitt, states that there were 10 startup exits in the Emirates in the first half of 2022, just one less than […]

Female startups face ‘bias’ over funding in Middle East

Startups founded by female entrepreneurs accounted for just 0.1 percent of the $105 million in funding raised in July, the lowest monthly level so far this year. Data compiled by Wamda, the largest early-stage investment fund in the Middle East, found that a total of $136,000 was raised by female-led startups last month, while those […]