12 startups selected to join Finance Forward MENA 2020
12 early-stage startups have been selected to take part in Finance Forward MENA 2020, an investment-readiness program that is a part of Finance Forward, a multi-year global coalition led by founding partners MetLife Foundation and PayPal. They support entrepreneurs on four continents who are building tech-enabled solutions to place-based challenges around financial health.
The selected companies come from Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, the UAE, and Turkey. They are working to help unbanked people gain access to formal financial services, create digital identities for refugees and migrant workers, provide access to employment for youth and women, help small business owners access affordable credit and offer opportunities for underserved people to earn, save and invest for the future.
Discover who the 12 startups selected are:
• Bilforon (Jordan) - is a marketplace application that connects customers with home-cooks who make and sell food from their houses.
Connect with Bilforon on their MAGNiTT profile.
• Buyback Bazaar Technology (UAE) - is an online portal that facilitates emergency access to cash in exchange for personal items, which users can ‘buyback’ within a specified period.
Connect with Buyback Bazaar on their MAGNiTT profile.
• Datacultr Fintech Limited (UAE) - is a platform that allows lending institutions to use smartphones as collateral for loans to new-to-credit customers while allowing devices to remain in the users’ possession.
• Distichain (UAE) - is an e-commerce and e-procurement platform that facilitates open trade between companies, regardless of geography or size, by partnering with banks to evaluate transaction risk in real-time.
Connect with Distichain on their MAGNiTT profile.
• PayMint (Egypt) - is a financial services platform for small businesses, providing services including payroll, cashless payment, insurance, lending, and money transfers to small businesses and their employees.
Connect with PayMint on their MAGNiTT profile.
• E-Bursum (Turkey) - is an education financing platform that guides students through the process by connecting them to scholarship, crowdfunding, and educational loan options while helping them avoid taking on unnecessary debt.
• HubPay (UAE) - is a digital wallet for the remittance community which aims to lower the cost of remittances while creating a digital wallet that fosters financial inclusion.
• Khazna Tech (Egypt) - is a salary-backed loan product that allows users to receive the earned part of their salary at any time throughout the month.
Connect with Khazna on their MAGNiTT profile.
• Markit (Lebanon) - is an on-demand grocery delivery service, allowing small and medium-sized grocers to offer their inventory and delivery services to customers through an online platform.
Connect with Markit on their MAGNiTT profile.
• Valify Solutions (Egypt) - enables those in rural areas to access formal financial services through digital identification services.
• We-Settle (Tunisia) - is a cloud-based solution for businesses to easily create, monitor, and collect invoices.
• Worq Company (Turkey) - is a one-stop-shop for small businesses, providing high-quality vendors and partners for key business services such as human resources, accounting and office space.
Despite a rocky first half of the year, Saudi Arabia’s startup funding increased by 102% from H1 2019 to H1 2020, with H1 2020 already surpassing full-year 2019 by the amount of funding. Discover more data by downloading our FREE H1 2020 Saudi Arabia Venture Capital Snapshot.
هذا التقرير متوفّر أيضاً باللغة العربية على الرابط التالي: تقرير الاستثمار الجريء في المملكة العربية السعودية في النصف الأول من عام ٢٠٢٠