First Saudi NFT marketplace Nuqtah closes Pre-Seed Round
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The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s first and leading NFT marketplace Nuqtah, has successfully closed their Pre-Seed round led by Shorooq Partners and joined by strategic angel investors.
As a local first platform, Nuqtah enables local creatives to publish and sell their work seamlessly and will serve as a global platform for buyers keen on acquiring the latest NFTs by renowned and emerging MENA artists. Nuqtah plans to build on the thriving NFTs space, and utilize the underlying blockchain technology to spearhead innovation in other verticals such as media and entertainment. The Company founded by Salwa Radwi plans to become the de-facto platform for the Saudi and MENA digital creative economy.
As venture spaces across MENA continuously develop new technologies and take the leap into the future of next-gen technologies, industries of digitization like FinTech, E-commerce, and Transport & Logistics have been taking the lead and the lion’s share of investment. This year, 71 transactions in FinTech and 67 in E-commerce startups across MENA by October marked a steady 15% and 12% YoY growth for the two industries respectively. Since October, we have been observing ample Investor openness to futuristic technologies, where funding rounds in Crypto were closed by CoinMENA and BitOasis, investments in open banking were highlighted in Tarabut Gateway’s $12M Pre-Series A and FinTech Galaxy's $2M SEED. This outlook for the future of Tech is surely represented in VC investments across MENA, where even earlier today the XR (Extended Reality) startup HyperSpace has announced its $11M SEED round to create Blockchain-powered technologies building physical spaces with metaverse (digital & AR) integrations.
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NFTs represents a major transformation for artists to safely register and trace any of their productions, with full details available on a public ledger that cannot be manipulated. The ability to trace original creators, and future line of owners, create a solution for the artist, and creatives to generate royalty payments for each time the asset changes ownership. Nuqtah Founder and CEO Salwa Radwi highlighted the unique positioning of the startup“Our goal is to create the ultimate environment for creatives in the Kingdom, where they can sell their masterpieces at the value they deserve safely & securely. The Nuqtah founding team is from the core of the creative community in the region & hence truly understands what it means to be a creative in the kingdom. “We are here to transform the industry.”
The NFT global market has witnessed tremendous growth between 2020 – 2021. In 2020 the NFT market was valued at just over $250mm and reached $2 billion in Q1 of 2021. According to Dapp Radar, as of Q3 2021, the total sales volume reached $10.7 billion. Amal Dokhan, Partner at 500 Global said “We are ecstatic to have Nuqtah be a part of our second cohort at Sanabil 500 MENA seed accelerator. Seeing more female founders take lead in Saudi is truly refreshing & more so in such an exciting intersection between the arts & blockchain in an Arabic-enabled NFT platform, we believe in Nuqtah's founding team and are surely privileged to support their journey towards Growth.”
The newly acquired funds will allow the KSA-based NFT pioneer to support its platform operations and further expand its product offerings. Shane Shin, Founding Partner at Shorooq Partners concluded “Ever since moving to Saudi, I have witnessed first hand the tremendous evolution of the creative and cultural landscape, led by passionate young Saudis. The Kingdom is on an ambitious digital transformation journey, and the creative economy is one of the core pillars of the nation's long-term vision. As we continue to back daring founders and support them in building enduring and sector-leading companies, we are privileged to join Nuqtah as the Kingdom's first NFT platform. We believe the Nuqtah team’s vision, and are humbled to work with them to take Nuqtah to the global NFT arena, representing the region's vibrant and rich creative depth.”
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