1. Tookeez (🇲🇦 Morocco), a fintech aiming to consolidate loyalty points across brands, has raised $1.5 million in a round led by Azur Innovation Fund for expansion in and outside Morocco.

2. Rakeez Capital (🇸🇦 KSA), a fintech facilitating Sukuk issuance financing solutions, has secured a $2 million Seed investment from Core Vision Investments.

3. 30Med (🇪🇬 Egypt), a healthtech bridging the gap between pharmaceuticals and physicians with digital platforms, has received pre-Seed funding from anonymous angel investors.

4. Seeru (🇦🇪 UAE), a platform that empowers travellers, agents, companies, and developers to access optimal travel deals, has raised pre-Seed funding from Nabtah Ventures for global expansion.

5. Zetta Technologies (🇸🇦 KSA), offering DaaS to optimize tech use for companies, has landed a $1.5 million pre-Seed round led by Core Vision.

6. ORA Technologies (🇲🇦 Morocco), a startup developing a superapp for multiple services including a digital wallet, has secured $1.5 million in seed funding from local entrepreneurs, in partnership with M2T.

💄 Meet Mojo! A Kuwaiti social commerce platform that connects users with beauty, skincare, and wellness products, offering a space to explore, purchase, and share personal reviews.

And they’ve just raised an undisclosed seven-figure Seed round!

💰 Investor lowdown: This round was led by existing pre-Seed investors, Emkan Capital and Joa Capital, along with new investors, including Plus VC, Atyab Al Marshoud, Wahed Invest, and other angel investors.

Right about now you probably have some questions about Mojo, right? 

🤔 Who? Founded in Kuwait by Abdulaziz Al-Bahar and Nadia Al-Hamad in 2022, Mojo aimed to redefine how we discover, share, and purchase beauty, skincare, and wellness products.

🤷‍♂️ What? The platform empowers users to not only explore a curated selection of offerings but also to become influencers in their own right, earning rewards and sharing their very own honest reviews and beauty journeys - all while earning some well-deserved money for their time!

✨ How? Well, that’s the beauty of it (excuse the pun), it’s really quite simple according to their website.

1. Download the Mojo app and create an account.

2. Browse and buy your favourite beauty, skincare, and wellness products. Once your products arrive, it's your turn to shine. Make some content!

3. Share your creations with the Mojo community, publicly or privately (publicly means more ways to make money btw), and start earning commissions on the sales you inspire - a hefty 10%!

📊 Show me the stats!

Mojo has already showcased growth by:

• Onboarding over 100 leading beauty and wellness brands.

• Achieving a 22x revenue growth last year alone.

📈 Market size? With the global beauty market projected to reach $716.6 billion by 2025, Mojo taps into the Middle East's burgeoning demand for a unique, community-driven shopping experience in beauty and wellness.

🔮 Flashforward

Mojo is eyeing expansion into Saudi Arabia and beyond with this fresh influx of funding.

🐢 Is it a FWDstart favourite?

YES! Mojo's community focus could seriously change how people decide to purchase beauty and wellness items. Monkey see, monkey do as they say…

Weigh in and let us know what you think?

5 months ago, Umair and Suhaib weren’t happy with how food delivery was set up in Saudi.

These co-founders saw a gap in the market for a creative way to order food. 

🍴 Enter Kitchenara! This Saudi-based foodtech offers a food delivery platform where users can explore restaurants through video reviews and receive AI-personalised meal suggestions.

No one wants to be starving, bored and stressed when they’ve decided to get a takeaway! 

With the global food delivery market set to reach $505.5 billion by 2030, Kitchenara caters to the modern diner's demand for quick, quality eats and engaging content.

• And they’ve just raised $380,000 in seed investment.

💰 Investor lowdown: This funding round was led by angel investors from the UAE.

🧑‍🍳 Who? Founded by Umair Khalid and Suhaib Nadeem in 2023, Kitchenara is part of Flat6Labs, a regional start-up accelerator. 

🍽️ What? Aside from ordering food on the app, users can also follow food influencers, share content and write reviews of different restaurants.

🤷‍♂️ How? 

1. Scroll through video reviews and AI-recommended eateries. 

2. Choose your meal based on what looks too good to resist. 

3. Then, simply place your order and while you’re waiting, get your mouth watering with more fun videos or by creating your own content! 

🔮 Flashforward

With these fresh funds, Kitchenara is set to keep building their platform and expand through Saudi Arabia and beyond. 

🐢 Is it a FWDstart favourite?

AI finding us something to eat while we sit back and scroll? Um, yes!

And with young people globally often exceeding 7 hours of screen time daily, we think that Kitchenara could be onto something! 

🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia - Gulf Capital has announced a partnership with the Saudi Research Development and Innovation Authority to inject over $100 million into the Saudi tech sector. This aims to nurture homegrown companies and attract international tech innovators to the Kingdom, focusing on sectors like healthtech, fintech, renewable energy, and sustainability.

✏️ Classera, a US-based, MENA-focused edtech firm, acquired Saudi's ERP solutions provider Expert Solutions.

💻 T2, a Saudi business development company, announced its acquisition of Oman's Promize, that specialises in customer data analysis.

🇩🇪 Germany & 🇦🇪 UAE - The Mitgo Group's recent acquisition of the UAE's Embedded marks expansion into embedded finance for the martech powerhouse. This is set to offer immediate financial services and benefits to publishers across the MENA, APAC, and LATAM regions.

• Side-effect. AI has a large and growing carbon footprint, but there are potential solutions on the horizon

• Gold mine or dumpster fire? Can Reddit survive its own IPO?

• Music to my ears… and eyes?! Spotify now has music videos!

👋 Message from the team

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