MANAMA: A Bahrain-born fintech has netted the largest fintech seed round funding in Mena history.
Tarabut Gateway, the region’s first open banking platform, has secured $13million – making it the largest fintech seed round in Mena history.
Bahrain was the first country in the region to outline an open banking policy and framework, with Tarabut being the first to graduate from the Central Bank of Bahrain’s regulatory sandbox.
Established in 2017, the fintech has developed an open banking API (application programming interface) that allows third-party financial services providers to securely access financial data and develop new apps and services.
Having offices in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, London and Manama, Tarabut reported the funding will support it in scaling its team and expanding regionally.
Investment into the platform is led by Target Global, a Berlin-based venture capital firm.
Bootstrapped privately in its initial phase, Tarabut launched its UAE presence last October and plans to hire 40 additional team members across Mena by the end of the year
The fintech’s chief executive and founder Abdulla Almoayed said: “The open banking industry is a catalyst for transforming the way banks and fintechs in the region interact with one another. With regional regulators quickly adopting it in their strategies, Tarabut Gateway provides the infrastructure which enables enhanced collaborations between financial institutions and an increasingly agile and flourishing regional FinTech sector.”
GDN reported last month that recent months have seen a ramp up in activity amongst fintech firms, both in terms of investment and product-to-market speed.
Venture capital funds and private investors responded to the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic by becoming more binary in their choices, electing to invest heavily in companies with immediate and acute market demand, as opposed to those whose products were more speculative and would take longer to develop.
Interest
Last week, Laundryheap, an on-demand laundry and dry cleaning platform, announced a $3.5m Series A round led by Sova VC. The round was joined by the SidebySide Partnership. Founded in 2014, and present in the Middle East since 2018, Laundryheap offers door-to-door laundry and dry-cleaning services to consumer and business customers, including major brands, returning items to users within 24-hours.
A surge in interest following the outbreak of Covid-19 has fuelled further market growth and led to a series of expansions, including into Singapore, Sweden and the USA.
Within the Middle East, the company has reported particularly rapid growth since March 2020, with customer growth hitting 60-80pc month-on-month. It is now operational in four countries – the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait – with plans for further expansion in the pipeline.
Laundryheap chief executive and founder Deyan Dimitrov said: “We’re raising this Series A because it’s the right time to focus on more rapid expansion and the round will enable us to consolidate our position as the best on-demand laundry platform in the market.”
avinash@gdn.com.bh
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