1. Crysp Farms (🇦🇪 UAE), an agritech operator of decentralised vertical farms, has secured a $2.25 million pre-Series A round led by Gate Capital with participation from regional investors.

2. KARTY (🇶🇦 Qatar), an e-wallet that enables individuals and companies to manage financial assets and savings through a user-friendly app, has raised $2 million in a seed round led by local investors.

3. Crealo (🇲🇦 Morocco), a copyright-management platform that seamlessly allows publishing houses to calculate and disburse royalties, has raised $1.42 million in Seed funding from the 212Founders programme operating under CDG Invest, Kima Ventures, Evolem, Super Capital, and angel investors.

4. Innotech (🇴🇲 Oman), a contech that automates the construction process using additive manufacturing, has raised $500,000 in investment from Hope Ventures, alongside private sector investors Areej Mohsen Darwish and Dr. Lamya Mahmood, during the Bahraini TV show "Bebean.”

5. Mira (🇪🇬 Egypt), a D2C beauty and wellness startup that offers a wide range of cosmetic and skin care products, has raised $200,000 from Wingoo Investment and Technology.

6. Edura (🇪🇬 Egypt), an edtech start-up that connects teachers and students through recorded or live interactive lessons, has raised an undisclosed pre-Seed funding round led by Smart Zone Startups Studio and angel investors.

7. Waanut (🇲🇦 Morocco), a social platform for discovering and sharing sports, cultural, and tourism experiences, has secured $200k in a funding round led by Augustulus Ventures.

8. Takadao (🇸🇦 KSA), a fintech startup building community-owned financial services on the blockchain, has raised an undisclosed investment from Adaverse, a Cardano ecosystem accelerator and seed fund with a focus on scaling Web3 solutions.

9. Akkrue Capital (🇦🇪 UAE), a non-custodial asset management platform that facilitates creating and executing digital asset strategies across any market chain, announced the successful conclusion of its seed funding round back in September 2023.

10. Cabrio (🇸🇦 KSA), a luxury transportation services company, closed an undisclosed pre-Seed round, led by a group of angel investors.

Meet DXwand! A Cairo and Dubai based startup start-up that leverages conversational AI to help businesses in the Middle East automate customer service and employee assistance.

And, they just secured $4 million in Series A funding.

• The company was founded in 2018 by Ahmed Mahmoud and Mahmoud Gomaa, and currently caters to over 40 clients across the MENA region, facilitating over 5 million conversations since its inception.

💰 Investor lowdown: The round was led by Shorooq Partners, Algebra Ventures, and existing investor Dubai Future District Fund.

🗻 Dialect and data

Okay, so if we boil it down, DXwand are tackling two problems 👇

1. Language: Arabic dialects are incredibly complex and varied. This diversity poses a challenge, as there's a shortage of AI solutions that are finely tuned to handle these language variations.

2. Automation: Imagine businesses with tons of data, like enoug policy document PDFs to fill a dhow. When they try to automate digital customer service or sales, they hit a snag because of the time-consuming manual data labelling needed for natural language understanding solutions to work their magic.

🛠️ Break it down

Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, knowledge mining is key you know.

Businesses can feed their raw data into DXwand's system, which then automates the labelling process by creating a pre-labeled set. This streamlines the implementation of conversational experiences for customers or staff, eliminating manual data labelling. Automation becomes a breeze not a burden.

DXwand's AI software automates text and voice interactions across various platforms like call centers, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, SMS, and websites. It understands both Arabic and English slang, extracting insights for businesses to make informed decisions.

🤔 How’s it going?

Not too shabby. In 2023, the company's ARR exceeded $5 million, a 2x growth from the previous year, with client subscriptions ranging from $50,000 to $400,000 based on usage.

🔮 Flashforward

The fresh funding will help DXwand to expand further afield in MENA and accelerate its research and development efforts in generative AI, knowledge mining, and omnichannel conversational AI within the region.

Let’s talk about Flat6Labs Second Demo Day! On Monday in Riyadh, 10 start-ups graduated from Flat6Labs, concluding the second cycle of the Riyadh Seed Program which provides:

• Seed funding of 500,000 SAR (around $130k), with potential follow-on funding up to 2.4 million SAR (around $640k).

• Access to an extensive network of regional and local investors and partners, along with comprehensive legal support.

And it doesn’t stop there!

• Post-programme, these startups still continue to receive support through various events and networking opportunities.

🌟 Let’s meet the graduates:

🛠️ Blomal is a crowdfunding platform that connects investors with a diverse range of funds, democratising access to both open-end and closed-end investment opportunities - all of which are available for as low as SAR 100! 

• Founded by Abdulaziz Baraqabah in 2021. 

📦 ClearForce specialises in seamless customs clearance. They facilitate the smooth transition of goods across borders, simplifying international trade logistics.

• Founded by Bader Almubarak in 2023. 

💊 Dawafast provides a tech solution that offers a wide range of pharmacy needs in under 30 minutes that aren’t available over on-demand delivery apps. 

• Co-founded by Muhammad Sobih, Omar L'Sbah, Motaz AbuOnq in 2022. 

🏠 Darent is a proptech start-up providing a platform for vacation rental listings and management, catering to both property owners and guests seeking unique stays.

• Founded by Hanin Alsubaie in 2021. 

📚 iStoria is an English-learning app that offers enjoyable graded stories to build a competent level of vocabulary from a beginner to an advanced level for language proficiency.

• Founded by Abdullah AlJaberi in 2020. 

🏢 NUZUL offers a one-stop-shop software for real estate professionals to manage listings and teams, publish on a dedicated website, and transact the deal.

• Co-founded by Razwa Alharthi and Mishaal Aljeraisy in 2022. 

🤖 Swarm Robotics offers robust software services and turnkey solutions in the field of robotics.

• Co-founded by Abdulelah Bokhamseen in 2023. 

📚 Tmyyoz is an ed-tech start-up that assists students in preparing for standardised tests in collaboration with specialised instructors and educators.

• Founded by Abdullah Bawazir in 2021. 

💉 UDAWI connects healthcare providers with individuals and businesses, simplifying health checkups and providing discounts at over 2,500 healthcare facilities in Saudi Arabia.

Did we mention they secured a $200,000 investment from Flat6Labs back in November?

• Co-founded by Mohsen Batwa in 2020. 

🔒 Waada is an insurtech start-up dedicated to making digital insurance simple, affordable, and accessible in Pakistan. They say they can get you insured in 2 minutes! 

Founded by Ishaq Kothawala in 2020.

📰 What we’re reading

• Under lock and key. OpenAI went back on a promise to make key documents public

• Time to say goodbye. Farewell to the Internet’s Master Timekeeper: David Mills

• Screen-age. What kind of adults will iPad kids be?

👋 Message from the team

Thanks for reading! Have a terrific weekend and we’ll see you again next week.

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