Early-Stage

Cloudshelf operates a chain of micro-fulfillment dark stores providing eCommerce stores with on-demand storage space, fulfillment services, delivery services, as well as sales channel management services.

Why we partnered

There is great potential in this space, and the team at Cloudshelf has the ability to dominate it. Founded by Ibrahim Alsegayyir, Bader Almaziad, and Abdullah Aloraini, who have strong sales and business backgrounds, they enable the Kingdom’s rapidly growing Q-Commerce industry to meet customers’ expectations of fast fulfillment. 

Lucidya offers a B2B SaaS tool that provides customer intelligence products geared towards the Arab world powered by machine learning, big data, and Arabic/English Natural language processing (“NLP”) technologies. It is software that collects, analysis, and visualizes data from social & traditional media.

Why we partnered

Backed by a serial entrepreneur, Lucidya can play a crucial role for any B2C business by enabling them to understand their customers’ feedback better, allowing them to diagnose potential issues before they impact the business, and helping them improve the overall company strategy. We believe that with its state-of-the-art features and its first-mover advantage, Lucidya will become a crucial element of every successful B2C business in Saudi.

Starzly is a marketplace that connects fans with celebrities and at the same time allows celebrities to monetize their social media beyond the regular ad-based model. 

The app also allows brands and small businesses to have direct communication with the influencers through personalized videos, direct messages, and video calls.

Why we partnered

We are seeing a growing demand for digital gifts and an increasing need for additional monetization options for influencers as the creator economy is booming. We believe that Starzly has achieved a leading position by consistently delivering a unique digital gift experience to consumers while enabling influencers to monetize. The MENA’s favorable demographics and social media savvy consumers will contribute substantially to the Company’s growth in the years to come.

Mabaat is an end-to-end property management platform targeted at improving revenue and profitability for the property owners and offering a premium stay experience at economical prices to the consumers.  

Why we partnered

As an important pillar of Vision 2030, the Saudi tourism industry is expected to grow rapidly driven by various strategic projects and initiatives. The need for a high-quality supply will increase quickly. We believe Mabaat is well-positioned to fill the growing supply gap and to dominate this space by utilizing its technology and expertise. 

Gameball is a customer engagement and retention platform that helps online brands personalize, reward and gamify their customers’ omni-channel experiences. It is an integrated loyalty platform that captures and measures specific events from the brand’s online or offline interfaces.

Why we partnered

With challenges, badges, referrals and purchase rewards, companies can use Gameball to create targeted and personalized engagement with customers.

We see the founders and the Gameball team very well positioned to create a great value to businesses to find a true way to engage online consumers. With expansion possibilities across the entire e-commerce market and ready-made integrations to Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, Zid, Salla the company is just getting started.

Dawul is a subscription-based social trading platform that allows users to follow copy the trading actions of expert market participants.

Why we partnered

Dawul is uniquely positioned to provide retail investors access to wealth management solutions outside of the investment bank mentality. A retail investor can find an experienced trader who they want to learn from and mimic. Effectively, Dawul creates a new market of financial services for traders. With over 5 million retail traders, opportunity knocks.

We see Dawul as a great opportunity for not only retail investors to gain access to wealth management, but also a way for experienced traders to monetize their knowledge and experiences.

Tamara offers buy now pay later solution for merchants and customers in Saudi Arabia. Tamara is the first BNPL fintech company to obtain a SAMA SandBox license.

Why we partnered

As consumer demand and e-commerce continue to grow, the idea of “buy-now, pay-later” (BNPL) is growing in a very different fashion than credit cards. The founders and the Tamara team are well positioned in the Saudi market to capture this opportunity by offering customers zero-interest credit terms on their purchases from partner merchants. 

Telfaz11 is a disruptive creative media studio with offices in Saudi Arabia and the UAE specializing in locally-relevant entertainment content from the Middle East.

Why we partnered

Telfaz11 Entertainment targets the film, media and entertainment industry by being a one-stop-shop for online media productions in the MENA region. Telfaz11 has cemented itself as a key provider of media creation. The company is uniquely positioned to grow with their consumers and establish itself at the forefront of media in MENA.

WakeCap is an enterprise solution to improve safety & productivity in construction sites.

Why we partnered

The construction industry is filled with technology, from heavy machinery to the hand-tools of labourers, Wakecap is the next step. Using smart hardhats to connect workers into a purpose-built “Site-Mesh-Network”, Wakecap gives a clear map of workers, congestions, and productivity across entire construction sites. Utilizing existing hardhats with a simple, snap-on module, Wakecap can rapidly be implemented on construction sites.

The world will not stop constructing new buildings and structures and we see Wakecap as an investment in an enterprise solution to improve safety, productivity and project management on any construction site.

Squadio (formerly known as Ibtikar) is a marketplace for full-time remote technology squads. The company allows clients to build and customize fully dedicated technology teams. Aimed at helping organizations get through the challenge of managing their digitalization needs, finding and recruiting talent.

Why we partnered

In the tech world, we believe digitalization is a key factor to success. With the growing demand and the limited access to talent in the region, and startups popping up every minute, Squadio’s solution seemed like the perfect opportunity to tackle this.

We believe that Squadio has a crucial role in empowering local startups by making the best talent across the globe accessible in a few clicks, and easily managed.

Dailymealz is a corporate lunch subscription service; delivering fresh, varied and tasty meals to your office daily, with weekly or monthly subscriptions.

Why we partnered

Ordering lunch has changed drastically in the past few years. From how we interact with restaurants to apps that connect restaurant, driver, and customer. DailyMealz is disrupting the way food delivery is handled for customers at the workplace. Not only does DailyMealz create a better lunch experience for employees at the workplace, it also supports companies retain their employees through easy access to lunch at a much lower cost.

Lendo helps SMEs looking for immediate cash flows and debt financing to crowd-fund from investors that are interested in short-term investment opportunities. Lendo is the first Consumer-to-Business (P2P) lending platform that obtained a sandbox license from the Saudi Central Bank.

Why we partnered

Lendo is an alternative finance channel for SMEs, filling a funding gap that banks have not approached. We have chosen the founders and Lendo’s team as they are working hard to eliminate the costs and issues seen with traditional financing. With a SMEs funding gap expected to reach USD c. 2.10bn in Saudi Arabia, Lendo is set to create a whole new segment of funding using peer-to-peer crowdlending.

Sabbar is an on-demand staffing platform for gig workers in the retail, hospitality, and entertainment industries in MENA.

Why we partnered

The ‘gig-economy’ has seen huge growth and development in the last several years. In particular how staff and businesses have begun to reposition themselves in the market. In order to tackle this change, Sabbar connects businesses with staff through an on-demand staffing platform. The company is simply evolving the perspective of retail, hospitality and entertainment to meet the needs of the modern flexible worker, giving power to workers and businesses alike.

With the continued expansion of Saudization, we see the need for retail workers rapidly increasing where the founders and Sabbar’s team are positioned to capture and lead this market. Couple this with the recent shifts in labor demands due to COVID, and you have a winner.

Noon Academy is an online learning platform enabling students to engage and collaborate with teachers and fellow students through study groups.

Why we partnered

Noon Academy is looking to the future of education-tech to bring students together. Utilizing a learning platform centered around study groups, Noon Academy allows students to engage and collaborate with fellow students and teachers alike. Taking learning from not only the classroom but to the home gives access to all students alike.

As education has been forced to be reinvented and reshaped, we believe that Noon Academy fills the need for remote education using both old and new principles. Education is truly changing, and we believe that Noon Academy is positioned to leverage this change.

Zid is an eCommerce as a service firm with an end-to-end solution, offering an easy-to-use eCommerce platform to launch an online store. Along with an ecosystem of payment, shipping and technology partners to seamlessly integrate and start selling with a few clicks.

Why we partnered

As Shopify has seen terrific success in creating a burgeoning ecommerce market for English speaking countries, Zid seeks to one-up Shopify. With a unique Arabic platform that blends ecommerce with local integrations to support businesses all from one application, Zid seeks to shake up the MENA region. Offering an online store, inventory management, delivery and payment integrations, Zid covers the e-commerce needs of any company looking to sell online.

With a great team of founders who have a successful track record of building and scaling companies, we see Zid on track to be a top platform for creating and enabling the launch of e-commerce businesses with ease throughout the MENA region.