Startups Arabia

Yasmine El-Mehairy is the Co-Founder and CEO of Dija, a platform helping Muslim women invest with confidence in a way aligned with their faith and values. Yasmine is a serial entrepreneur, passionate about startups with purpose. Before launching Dija, she worked in global financial service organizations like City Ventures and Deloitte Digital, as well as founding and managing other startups in var...

Ramez El-Serafy is the General Partner and Co-Founder of F6 Ventures, bringing over 18 years of experience in technology, investments, entrepreneurship, and management. Before launching F6 Ventures, Ramez served as CEO of Flat6Labs from 2011 to 2025, where he led its transformation into one of the most active innovation platforms in the Middle East and Africa, expanding its footprint, scaling its...

Born in Tunisia and “well-travelled”. Geek, started my first software company at the age of 16. Studied Software Engineering and AI at INSA Toulouse and University of Western Ontario. Joined Microsoft, where I spent 7 years — from Software Engineer to Engineering Manager — and truly fell in love with testing and quality. Then co-founded Expensya, an AI-powered expense management scale-up that grew...

Jon Santillan is the co-founder of OCTA, a platform automating financial operations for businesses — starting with accounts receivables and embedded financing. He’s a second-time founder, previously building and selling Denarii to Careem. Based in Dubai, Jon’s been operating in the region for over a decade, and he’s now focused on helping SMEs across the Middle East get paid faster, streamline wor...

Khaled Talhouni is the Managing Partner and co-founder of Nuwa Capital, a VC firm investing in early-stage startups across the MENAPT region, based in Dubai and Riyadh. He has managed over 150 early-stage deals with a total AUM exceeding $300M and has successfully exited 15+. With deep expertise in venture investing and portfolio management, he plays a key role in shaping the region’s startup ecos...

Michael Lints has over 20 years of experience helping innovative businesses obtain the resources, insights, and expertise they need in order to be successful. Michael has been a startup operator, investor, and mentor, and is currently a Partner at the Singapore-based venture capital firm Golden Gate Ventures. He joined the firm in 2013 and is currently leading growth venture efforts, which include...

Julien is the Senior Partner at Oraseya Capital, where he leads the firm’s investment strategy, oversees deal sourcing and execution, and actively manages a diverse portfolio of early-stage startups. Oraseya Capital invests from pre-Seed to Series B stages, fostering innovation and scaling transformative businesses across key sectors. Julien is also a member of the investment committee. In 2021, J...

Waleed A. Alballaa is a technologist-turned-investor with a proven track record across global and MENA markets, spanning semiconductors, wireless, mobility, and eGovernment. As a Founding General Partner at Sukna Ventures , he backs early-stage, tech-driven startups across the region. Prior to Sukna, Waleed co-founded STV , one of the MENA region’s largest VC funds, and led pivotal initiatives at...

Saoud was born in Kuwait during the Gulf War and left to the US at the age of 18. Saoud launched Fakespot.com in 2016, a platform that detects fake reviews using AI, after being scammed by a supplement with fake ratings. Since then, Fakespot is now used by millions of shoppers worldwide when browsing popular eCommerce websites. Fakespot was acquired by Mozilla in 2023 and is now integrated into Mo...

Leena Khalil is currently a Partner at Key Capital and was the co-founder of Mumzworld. In 2011, she co-founded Mumzworld.com, a leading platform dedicated to making parenting easier across the region. Following its strong growth, Mumzworld.com was fully acquired by the Saudi healthcare giant Tamer Group. Leena stepped down as CEO in 2024. Before her role at Mumzworld, Leena worked in investment b...

Mohammad AlRazaz is a serial entrepreneur and the Co-founder & CEO of OTO, MENA’s largest shipping integrator and aggregator platform, powering online businesses and omni-channel brands. At just 22, Mohammad launched Jeeny (formerly EasyTaxi) in Saudi Arabia with Rocket Internet, becoming the youngest Country Manager globally. An MIT Global Entrepreneurship Bootcamp alumnus, he has built multi...

Amal Dokhan is an entrepreneurship advocate, a venture capitalist and an ecosystem builder operating for more than a decade in the MENA region. Amal is the managing partner at 500 Global managing the Sanabil 500 MENA seed accelerator fund focusing on investing in early stage tech startups. She previously worked at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, managing accelerator programs an...

Mohammed is the Managing Partner at Nama Ventures, a pre-seed / seed stage fund fueling tech innovation in the MENA region, especially in Saudi. Previously, he was the managing director of Tharwa Capital, a Dubai based financial investment and advisory firm focusing on the technology equity markets. He’s also led the Venture Capital practice at Global Investment House, a Kuwait based investment co...

Ameer Sherif is the founder and chairman of Basharsoft, the company behind Wuzzuf and Forasna, Egypt's leading online employment platforms for both white collar and blue collar workers, respectively. Collectively, both platforms impacted the lives of over seven million job seekers in Egypt and helped 70,000+ companies hire more than one million people over the past years. They've had signi...

Hasan Haider has over 13 years of experience investing in MENA startups. Hasan is the Founder and Managing Partner of +VC, one of the most active early stage venture capital firms focused on the MENA region. Hasan was previously Managing Partner, MENA at 500 Startups and led the firms growth in the MENA Region, turning 500 Startups into the most active VC fund in the MENA region, raising and deplo...

VCpreneur, at The Intersection Of VC & Data Ahmad Takatkah is a technical founder turned VC, with a background in computer engineering, data science (AI and ML), and product management.  Over the past 15 years, Ahmad has helped set up and operate three VC firms. For which he created new deal sourcing, startup evaluation, and exit prediction tools.  Ahmad utilized a new AI model he customized t...

Rama Kayyali is CEO and co-founder of Little Thinking Minds, an award-winning edtech company with a mission to close Arabic language literacy gaps, creating digital learning platforms to improve targeting over 100 million children in MENA and over 100 million globally. Currently Little Thinking Minds platforms are used by half a million students in 800 schools in 10 countries in the MENA region in...

Wael is a Computer Engineer, serial entrepreneur, and YC alumnus who has co-founded various startups in the Silicon Valley and the Middle East. He was one of the early employees of Careem and held roles including VP of Product Management and VP of Platform Superapp Business Unit until Uber's acquisition for $3.1bn. Wael is a techie at heart and has built technology products used by tens of mil...

Dr. Waleed Kadous is Chief Scientist at Anyscale, the company behind the popular open source distributed computing platform Ray. He leads the company’s LLM efforts. Prior to Anyscale, Waleed worked at Uber, where he led overall system architecture, evangelized machine learning, and led the Location and Maps teams. He previously worked at Google, where he founded the Android Location and Sensing te...

Asher Siddiqui is a tech investor with a global career spanning 25+ years, having made 100+ investments valued at $15bn+. Asher is a General Partner at Sukna Ventures, a MENA focused early-stage VC Fund that backs exceptional teams building the software & data infrastructure layer enabling the digital transformation of industries across the MENA region. Asher started out in the late 90’s as an...

Asher Siddiqui is a tech investor with a global career spanning 25+ years, having made 100+ investments valued at $15bn+. Asher is a General Partner at Sukna Ventures, a MENA focused early-stage VC Fund that backs exceptional teams building the software & data infrastructure layer enabling the digital transformation of industries across the MENA region. Asher started out in the late 90’s as an...

Ismael Belkhayat is the CEO and cofounder of Chari. He’s a serial founder who is a notable figure in the Moroccan tech ecosystem. After his time in consulting at the Boston Consulting Group, Ismael founded two companies that would kickstart his entrepreneurial career: the Venture Builder Wib.co, a startup studio, and VotreChauffeur, a leading ground transportation company in Morocco later acquired...

With that we conclude the first season of the Startups Arabia Podcast. Your host, Ali Zewail, takes a moment to reflect on the podcast’s first season and the journey thus far. Thank you for joining us and a special thank you to our wonderful guests who made it all possible. —----------------------------------------------------------- The Startups Arabia Podcast connects you to the most prominent f...

Eman Hylooz is the Founder and CEO of Abjjad, the first and biggest Arabic digital reading platform. Her passion for reading and solid experience in technology inspired her to create Abjjad and embark on the journey of promoting digital reading in the Middle East. Prior to establishing Abjjad, Eman worked in the IT field, where she gained valuable experience in digital marketing. She has also work...

Belal is the co-founder and CEO of MaxAB, after getting his BASs from Virginia Tech in the States, Belal decided to join his family business and worked there for 2 years before joining the famous ride-hailing app "Careem'', then he decided to walk out of flourishing career in the middle east's first unicorn to build an app that will transform the Egyptian B2B grocery market forever...