The funding round was co-led by TPG’s Rise Fund, its first investment in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia, and Sanabil Investments, a subsidiary of the Public Investment Fund (PIF). 

Other participants include QED, Raed Ventures, Impact 46, MEVP, Isometry Capital, Arzan VC, BNVT Capital, Kaltaire Investments, Endeavor Catalyst, Nour Nouf Ventures, Khwarizmi Ventures, and Wamda Capital.

HALA, which provides embedded financial services to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), said the fresh capital will help it strengthen its Saudi market presence, introduce lending products, and expand regionally. 

The company already serves more than 142,000 businesses and processes over $8 billion in transactions annually.

The SME sector represents a key growth area for Saudi Arabia. With as many as 1.8 million SMEs contributing 20–35% of GDP, equivalent to $310–375 billion USD annually, the demand for digital financial solutions is only expected to rise. 

SMEs also employ about 4.7 million people and have grown their GDP contribution by 45% between 2016 and 2021, supported by government initiatives and the wider digital transformation push under Vision 2030.

HALA’s Co-founder and Chairman, Esam Alnahdi, described the investment as a milestone. “This landmark investment is a turning point for HALA, reflecting on our relentless pursuit of innovation and excellence in serving small businesses. 

“We are honored that our new investors recognise the potential of our vision and the impact we aspire to make in the MSME landscape. Our journey is just beginning, and this support fuels our drive to create meaningful change.”

Group CEO and Co-founder, Maher Loubieh, stressed the role of both long-standing and new investors: “We are honored by the continued trust and support of our existing investors – distinguished local and regional business leaders and funds – whose contributions have been instrumental to HALA’s journey so far. At the same time, we are proud to welcome all our new partners, including TPG’s Rise Fund and Sanabil, who, by joining our journey, gave a strong testimonial of the business that the team has built. 

“As we look at the next phase of our growth, we believe that our diverse group of prominent investors bring valuable global expertise and perspective which will elevate our ambitions to execute with even greater scale and impact.”

The Rise Fund said the deal highlights the strength of the market and HALA’s model. Yemi Lalude, partner at TPG and head of Europe, Middle East and Africa for The Rise Funds, commented: “HALA is uniquely positioned to empower micro and small businesses, a key pillar in the region’s economy, by delivering business owners and their customers a broad and growing set of payment solutions. We are excited to support the HALA team in building a clear leader in this underserved segment. 

“Our investment underscores our belief in the growth potential of this market, the rising demand for robust digital banking solutions, and the critical role entrepreneurs play in shaping the next generation economy, not just though innovation but by creating jobs, expanding access, and delivering meaningful social impact.”

Sanabil Investments also underlined its confidence in the company, stating: “We are excited to lead this landmark Series B funding round for HALA. This investment underscores our belief in HALA’s potential to reshape the future of financial services for SMEs and aligns with Sanabil’s mission to support visionary companies with patient capital and strategic guidance. We look forward to partnering with HALA and the other investors in supporting their continued success and expansion.”

With this financing secured, HALA is ready to scale its impact across and beyond the Middle East.

The investment was led by Sanabil Investments, a subsidiary of the Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia, and RAED Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on the MENA region.

Founded in 2021 by Ahmed Alhakbani, SiFi aims to simplify expense management for businesses operating in Saudi Arabia. The platform offers varying solutions designed for businesses to adequately manage their corporate spending. 

A key feature is automation of expense matching, categorization, and approvals. This eliminates the need for tedious manual tasks, saving businesses valuable time and reducing the risk of errors caused by human data entry.

SiFi also facilitates the issuance and management of corporate cards, providing employees with a convenient method for making business-related purchases while ensuring all transactions are tracked and accounted for within the platform.

For employees who don’t use corporate cards, SiFi simplifies the expense reimbursement process. The platform allows for easy submission and approval of reimbursement requests, ensuring a smooth workflow.

SiFi also ensures real-time expense tracking and analytics, providing businesses with insights into their spending patterns. With this data, businesses can make informed financial decisions and optimize their operations to achieve greater efficiency.

SiFi’s platform addresses common challenges associated with traditional expense management methods. Via the automation of tasks like expense matching, categorization, and approvals, the platform reduces the risk of errors caused by manual data entry. 

Aside from providing businesses with features like customizable card restrictions and real-time expense tracking to combat fraud, SiFi also addresses the issue of limited visibility into spending data through the provision of comprehensive expense data and analytics, allowing businesses to gain a clearer understanding of their spending patterns.

Alhakbani believes that SiFi can improve the efficiency of finance departments by helping them to simplify expense management processes and better serve other departments within the organization. He envisions SiFi evolving beyond expense management to become a comprehensive financial solution suite for businesses.

The recent funding round will fuel SiFi’s growth plans within the Saudi market. The company’s long-term vision includes expanding its operations beyond Saudi Arabia’s borders, and leveraging its scalable technology infrastructure.

This investment shows the growing occurrences of venture capital activity in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government is implementing initiatives to facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship as part of its economic diversification plan aimed at reducing the nation’s dependence on oil revenue. 

SiFi joins a growing list of Saudi startups that have secured funding in 2024, despite the global slowdown in venture capital activity.

SiFi faces competition from other regional players in the spend management space, including Sanad (Saudi Arabia), Pemo (UAE), and Alaan. 

The program received over 590 applicants from the MENA region, making it one of the most competitive batches to date with an acceptance rate of less than 2.5%. For the first time, the highest number of applications came from Saudi Arabia, at 159.

The Sanabil 500 MENA Seed Accelerator Program provides pre-seed and seed-stage startups across the Middle East and North Africa region with the foundation they need to validate and scale their business at both a regional and global level.

Companies selected in the 4th batch are focused on developing solutions that address issues across a diverse range of sectors, including Fintech, Food & Beverage, Agtech, Healthtech and Insurtech. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE are the top 3 countries of origin for this batch.

“We have been working closely with Batch 4 founders since September 2022 to help pave their way to success. They join the 39 companies that have already graduated from the Sanabil 500 MENA Seed Accelerator Program since our launch more than a year ago. Despite global economic headwinds, we continue to strongly believe in the potential of the Saudi and MENA startup ecosystem,” said Amal Dokhan, General Partner at 500 Global MENA.

“The growing interest in the Sanabil 500 MENA Seed Accelerator Program is testament to the unwavering commitment among startups to innovate and develop effective solutions to everyday issues. The increased participation from the top 3 geographies is a positive indication to the deepening entrepreneurial drive in Saudi and the MENA region. We look forward to this year’s Demo Day and to continue enabling great minds, ideas and companies,” said Sanabil Spokesperson.

The 12-week program offers founders one-on-one mentorship with a focus on business strategy development, fundraising, and growth. Demo Day, scheduled for the 4th of December, 2022 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Riyadh, is the final stop for the program where the 15 applicants present to a live audience of key stakeholders, including accredited investors, corporates and industry professionals. The event is also livestreamed to a wider audience on YouTube.

Here are Batch 4 companies:

1. AMWAL (Egypt): A sharia-compliant crowd-lending platform that connects individual investors to short-term, funding opportunities with SMBs helping them fulfill their transactions.
2. Deben (Egypt): Empowers CFOs to analyze, report, forecast, transact – manage your cash efficiently – no matter who your business banks with.
3. Egab (Egypt): A platform that connects reputable media outlets to exclusive high-quality stories by engaging journalists in hard-to-reach areas.
4. Eighty6 (UAE): A B2B marketplace for restaurants’ and suppliers’ daily procurement needs.
5. FarmUnboxed (UAE): Digitizes the international food supply chain by enabling supermarkets to source better quality produce with farm traceability.
6. Joy (Saudi Arabia): A one-stop app that delivers car services with affordable prices while ensuring quality and accessibility.
7. Karaz (Saudi Arabia): A holistic solution that enables people with diabetes to live better lives using gamification, IOT & real time data.
8. Medicarri (Saudi Arabia): A B2B medical marketplace connecting clinics with medical suppliers in one place.
9. Mod5r (Saudi Arabia): A fintech app that helps anyone to make automated, recurring investments to grow their wealth in an easy and secure way.
10. Monak (Oman): Fintech that provides financial inclusion and life services to migrants via partnered networks in the middle east.
11. Neqabty (Egypt): A community-based fintech platform that digitizes the financial and medical services of syndicates and labor unions, making them more accessible and affordable to their members.
12. NutriCal (UAE): A GCC-based food intelligence SaaS platform that powers F&B businesses and government authorities with nutritional analysis as well as dynamic and compliant food labels.
13. Stuck (Saudi Arabia): Live, on-demand language support for individuals and businesses to provide quality and hassle-free writing.
14. Walzay (Saudi Arabia): Helps MENA companies hire global experienced, pre-verified tech talent for full-time roles while reducing the total hiring time from 3 months to 1.
15. Wellxai (UAE): Provides individuals and companies with insurance that enables and rewards habits like physical activity, mental wellness and healthy eating.

The round also mark’s the largest funding round ever in Edtech, in MENA and most of Africa.

Classera will leverage the fund to continue developing its Learning Super Platform (“LSP”) for the education and corporate training sectors, and cement its position as a global leader in e-learning and EdTech. 

The round was led by Sanabil Investments, wholly owned company by Public Investment Fund (“PIF”), accompanied by Global Ventures, Endeavor Catalyst, 500 Global, Sukna Venture, and Seedra Ventures. The round additionally included a diverse set of investors from Silicon Valley, emerging markets, and global family offices. 

In addition to Classera’s new product, the investment will be used to target more growth in MENA, the rest of Africa, and to accelerate its global expansion especially into Asia Pacific (APAC) and elsewhere, via direct sales, channel partners, and acquisitions. The proceeds will also help Classera – via its specialized platform for corporate e-training “LeadXera”- to expand faster into that huge sector – which is on of the primary target post this investment.

Classera is the largest Edtech company in MENA and most of sub-Saharan Africa, educating millions of learners in over 30 countries. The Company’s LSP is a fully integrated eco-system that includes a gamified learning management platform based on A.I and social learning, an augmented reality learning app “C-Reality”, a full ERP for educational institutions “C-Smarter”, an integrated e-payment gateway “C-Pay” for pocket money, tuitions payments and financing, and a specialized educational marketplace for Edtech and educational supplies products “Edumalls”. All under one umbrella to ease the process and boost learning engagement and thus the overall learning experience.

Classera’s thousands of customers include over 10 Ministries of Education, private K-12 schools, universities, and corporates for e-training. It has developed over 100 strategic partnerships with global and regional players including Microsoft, Zoom, Amazon, Intel, Udemy, and HP. Last year, the company launched a co-branded solution alongside HP, under the name “HP-ClassEasy by Classera” which is now offered in several countries globally. 

Mohammad Almadani, CEO and co-founder of Classera, said:

“Today is a milestone in the Classera journey. I am honored to receive the backing of such an esteemed group of global investors, and immensely proud of our team whose passion has always been to revolutionise the learning experience. Together, we scaled Classera from limited resources to become a leading global EdTech platform. I am glad that we impacted and empowered the learning journey of millions, I hope our evolving story will serve as an inspiration to others, and we are optimistic that the best is yet to come.”

“The funding will help us take our ‘LSP’ to the next level, making it smarter, inspiring and simpler, and for our clients and partners globally. Many learning institutions, especially after the pandemic, are convinced they need the next generation of e-learning solutions. This is where Classera comes in; as we aim to expand our offerings to more global markets and become the partner of choice for education and training institutions covering all of their needs in a turnkey solution and provide its members with a unique learning experience that enables them to reach their full potential.”

Commenting on the announcement, Sanabil Investments said:

“Classera has developed and successfully deployed a platform that reaches millions of users and has grown to become one of the leading emerging market e-learning solution providers globally. We are fully committed to enable Classera to further expand its reach to learners across all socio-economic backgrounds.”

Classera delivered one of the highest engagement metrics in the e-learning industry globally in the last academic year. In the journey, the engaging gamified platform enabled the company to secure close to 70% market share in several markets in the region, generating high engagement – leading to over 10 billion page-views.

Along its path, Classera has also received several global awards in the Edtech industry including Bett, The Learning Award, GESS, Microsoft best global partner award and many more.