MENA

Fluent Ventures backs replicated startup models in emerging markets

Venture /

A new venture firm aims to prove that the most successful startup ideas don’t have to be born or scaled in Silicon Valley. Fluent Ventures, a global early-stage fund, is backing founders replicating proven business models from Western markets in fintech, digital health, and commerce across emerging markets. The more cynical might describe this as […]

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Fuse raises $6.6M to fix a payment problem for companies expanding to MENA

Fintech /

Expanding into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) remains a costly and complex challenge for global businesses, thanks to fragmented regulations and banking systems. Dubai-based fintech Fuse aims to simplify that with a cross-border payments API and has raised $6.6 million in seed funding to make it happen. Founded in 2023 by George Davis,

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Saudi’s BRKZ closes $17M Series A for its construction tech platform

Commerce /

Construction procurement is highly fragmented, manual, and opaque, forcing contractors to juggle multiple suppliers, endure lengthy negotiations, and deal with delayed payments. In Saudi Arabia, where trillion-dollar infrastructure and real estate projects are underway, these inefficiencies are even more pronounced. To address this, BRKZ, a Riyadh-based construction tech startup, offers a tech-enabled managed marketplace that

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MoneyHash, which provides single access to payment services in MENA, banks $5.2M

Fintech /

When merchants or companies launch online, they typically start by partnering with one or two payment processors. But as they grow and expand into new regions, they often need to onboard additional payment partners to meet different customer (and sometimes regulatory) needs, a process that comes with some hurdles.  That’s given rise to companies to

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Revenue-based financing startups continue to raise capital in MENA, where the model just works

Startups /

In an era where it’s become tougher to raise venture capital, many companies have turned to non-dilutive, Revenue-Based Financing (RBF) as an alternative. As a result, plenty of startups have risen to meet that challenge, none more so than in the MENA region, which has taken to the model like a duck to water. The

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Payroll startup Cercli inks $4M to build the “Rippling for the Middle East and North Africa”

Enterprise /

While scaling and managing teams at two of the largest unicorns in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, Akeed Azmi and David Reche stumbled on what they believed was a $2 billion opportunity. They realized that their former employers at Careem and Kitopi as well as other local businesses in the region struggled with payroll management and

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