Online retail, marketplaces, and digital commerce
Mazal has opened a Dubai app that holds a buyer’s money until the plate is transferred, and charges 5 percent. A launch auction of 10 lots raised Dh3.2 million. The Dh1.7 billion market figure is the company’s. No funding round was disclosed.
Bosta said it won four Egypt titles at the International Business Magazine Awards 2026 and is bracing last-mile operations for Black Friday. A 2025 note from the chief executive cited 37 million shipments. Judges and scoring were not published.
Dubai’s Amaani raised a $5 million Series A led by BECO Capital for AÏZA’s GCC push. Surge and Homegrown Ventures joined. Total funding is $8 million. A 9x H1 revenue jump is company-reported. Saudi Ulta doors are due at the end of September.
Saudi fintech Dhimam closed an undisclosed angel round to build financial guarantee rails for digital trades. Founder Ahmed Al-Abdullatif will spend on product, stack and local partners. Investor names and ticket size were not published.
A thousand synthetic customers judged Grona’s AI Marketing Hackathon at COLABS Narjis on 30 August, the afternoon before LEAP. Fifty percent of the score was simulated conversion. The point was a first real run, not another agent demo.
Platformance launched Ads Inside Intelligence on 17 September, live in 13 MENA markets including the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The tool scores how often a brand appears in ChatGPT answers, then sells a sponsored card underneath.
Egyptian-founded Zeal closed a $10 million investment round, taking total funding to $14 million, to switch loyalty software on more than four million contracted card machines. New investors were not named.
Keep Converting has raised a USD 2 million pre-seed led by Nuwa Capital and COTU Ventures, exiting stealth with an AI platform that builds personalised product pages in real time and a claimed 64 per cent conversion lift.
Saudi retailtech startup Raff has raised 1.7 million dollars in a pre-seed round led by Vision Ventures. It runs against the usual e-commerce story, helping online brands break into physical retail by digitising distribution, inventory and fulfilment.
Rozenama, a Baghdad-based e-commerce platform, has closed a 150,000 dollar pre-seed round. The sum is small, but it backs a company digitising Iraqi merchants who still sell via Instagram and WhatsApp, in one of MENA's most nascent tech markets.