Startup Wrap: Saudi leads the way in flurry of regional activity in startups ecosystem

Startup Wrap: Saudi leads the way in flurry of regional activity in startups ecosystem

CAIRO: The Middle East and North Africa region witnessed staggering activity in the startup and venture capital space last week spearheaded by Saudi Arabia.

The region’s startup ecosystem experienced debt and equity financing with one mega round as well as cross-border investments.

For its part, Saudi Arabian startups managed to secure a large bulk of funding while UAE-based startups also participated with a fair share.

Founded in 2020, Tamara is one of the region’s leading buy now, pay later providers with over 15,000 partner merchants using their services.

“Providing excellent products and services to our customers across shopping, payments and banking is at the core of Tamara,” Abdulmajeed Alsukhan, co-founder and CEO of Tamara, said.

The funding will provide the company with support to finance the demand for its BNPL product and continue its growth across new verticals.

“The team has shown the ability to scale a complex B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) business model, and BNPL is just an initial offering. We see a much deeper demand that we can fulfill with the same technology and customer-first approach,” Alsukhan added.

Saudi Arabia’s healthtech startup Aumet raised $7 million in a pre-series A funding round from Tokyo-based venture capital firm AAIC and Swiss private equity firm AIJ