We’ve seen this play out in markets around the world. In China, the rise of ecommerce gave way to new models like social commerce. In India, digital payments infrastructure enabled a new generation of fintech and wealth-tech companies. As ecosystems mature, the biggest opportunities often shift from digitizing existing workflows to creating entirely new experiences on top of digital foundations.

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Saudi Arabia appears to be entering a similar phase. With high digital adoption, a cashless economy, and a growing base of technology-first consumers, founders are increasingly building companies that go beyond simply moving offline industries online.

The venture capital ecosystem around them is evolving just as fast, shaping what gets funded, what scales, and what a large Saudi technology company looks like in 2026 and beyond.

To dig into both sides of that story, Termsheet has partnered with COLABS to host two evenings in Riyadh.

Evening One: Second Order Disruption

A panel with the founders of Soum, Stream, and Aya, on how Saudi startups are evolving, from digitizing existing industries to addressing the inefficiencies and trust gaps that first wave left behind, and the new markets emerging as a result.

📅 Thursday, June 25
⌚ 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
📍 COLABS Narjis, Riyadh

Register here: https://luma.com/k2sz8vi6

Evening Two: STV on the Saudi Venture Market

A fireside chat with Ahmad AlNaimi, General Partner from STV covering their investment thesis, how they’re reading the Saudi ecosystem today, the exit landscape, and where AI fits into the next chapter of Saudi technology.

📅 Sunday, June 28
⌚ 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
📍 COLABS Narjis, Riyadh

Register here: https://luma.com/4rphk09g

Hope to see some of you there.

Zubair

For many of my writings on Termsheet, I regularly research public companies in the Middle East and have realized that public market data in the region is surpris…

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This series breaks that down: GMV, market share estimates, revenue, growth rates, margin profiles, unit economics, and comparisons with international peers. Through the numbers of Tabby and Tamara.

GMV and market share

BNPL volumes in Saudi Arabia reached $9.8 billion in 2024, growing 38 percent year-over-year; down from a near-tripling to $7.1 billion the year before.

Transactions grew 49 percent, also slower than 2023’s near-triple, and faster than GMV; implying a decline in average order value.

More tellingly, in absolute terms both metrics contracted: GMV grew by $2.7 billion in 2024 versus $4.8 billion in 2023, and transactions grew by 21.3 million versus 27.7 million.

It is the first time since BNPL was introduced in the Kingdom that growth has decelerated on every measure simultaneously.

Part of this is simply scale; maintaining the same rates requires materially higher absolute volumes; but the deceleration is broad enough to signal genuine maturation.

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Estimating GMV for 2025

The official numbers from the Saudi Central Bank for 2025 will not be released until the third quarter of 2026, but we can estimate the GMV.

Tabby and Tamara generated revenue run-rates of $229 million and $173 million respectively in 2024, based on their 9M 2024 numbers. The combined revenue run-rate for the two companies was $402 million.

About $15 million of this would have come from the fixed SAR 1 fee per transaction. Excluding that leaves $387 million in merchant fee revenue.

Assuming a blended take rate of 4.25 percent; against a headline rate of approximately 6–7 percent for smaller merchants, with large retailers negotiating meaningfully lower rates on account of scale; this implies a combined GMV of about $9.1 billion, which translates into roughly 93 percent market share.

Given the dominance of Tabby and Tamara on the checkout pages of most leading retailers in the Kingdom, this estimate seems reasonable.

There are other BNPL companies operating in the Kingdom; including Madfu, MISPay, Jeel (Study Now Pay Later), and Tasheel Finance’s Baseeta; but they likely account for a small share of the market.

Based on 9M 2025 numbers, Tabby and Tamara generated merchant revenue run-rates of $338 million and $245 million respectively.

At a blended take rate of 4.25 percent, after excluding fixed merchant fee revenue, this implies combined GMV of roughly $13.2 billion; or about $14.2 billion for the total market, assuming the two companies retained their 93 percent share. That would represent year-over-year growth of about 46 percent.

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Here’s the breakdown and some thoughts.

(Market caps as of February 2, 2026. Revenue and margi…

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After years of sharing insights on startups in the Middle East, I’ve realized most get lost in the noise. But a few stick, and this one has never left me.

I remember sharing it with a leading regional investor who, despite having all the venture data at their fingertips, was still surprised.

It was both fascinating and unfortunate. The insight.

“Until late 2018, Saudi had no female-founded, venture-backed startups, except those that may have raised small accelerator checks.”

But like much else in the Middle East’s largest economy, this changed; and it changed fast.

In December 2018, Gathern became the first Saudi female-founded startup to raise money.

Its seed round included Vision Ventures, Inspire Ventures, 500 Global (formerly 500 Startups), and a few other investors. The size of the round was not disclosed.

It was a chalet booking platform at the time, but apparently had plans to expand beyond chalets, which is what the investors backed.

With its Series B last week, it became the highest-valued startup in the Middle East & North Africa, founded and led by a woman.

In less than seven years, Gathern went from Saudi’s first female-founded, venture-backed startup to the region’s highest-valued woman-led startup.

But that’s not the only reason this is a special company. There are other reasons that make Gathern stand out.

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1) As I discussed above, Gathern began (in 2016) with a straightforward idea: enabling users to book chalets, or istarahas, as they are known locally.

At the time, this was one of the most common startup concepts in Saudi. Dozens of entrepreneurs launched similar apps, trying to formalize a market that had always been fragmented. But most of those efforts never progressed beyond being apps. They were unable to transition into sustainable companies.

Gathern was different. It institutionalized what others had treated as side projects and built a company around it.

It quickly became clear that chalets were a small market. The bigger opportunity was short-term rentals more broadly. Gathern expanded fast. That shift let it capture far more bookings than any niche could support.

Less than seven years later, it’s preparing for a public listing; one of the few internet companies in Saudi to reach this stage.

2) When you think about local rivals to global consumer tech platforms, Uber and Airbnb make for an interesting comparison. Uber has faced large, well-funded competitors in almost every major market it entered: Didi in China, Grab and GoJek in Southeast Asia, Ola in India, Bolt in Europe, Careem in the Middle East.

The reason is simple; ride-hailing is inherently local. Regulations differ, car supply is fragmented, and customers care about price more than brand. That meant incumbents who could adapt faster to local dynamics often matched or beat Uber in their markets.

Airbnb, by contrast, hasn’t seen the same pattern. Outside of China, where Tujia and Xiaozhu grew into meaningful players, Airbnb dominates most markets.

The mechanics are different. Vacation rentals benefit from network effects at both the demand and supply level. Travelers want the widest selection of listings, and hosts want access to the broadest pool of travelers.

This creates a winner-take-most dynamic that makes it harder for local alternatives to reach critical mass, even if they’re well-capitalized. It’s a category naturally suited to a global winner, thanks to network effects, brand trust, and supply aggregation.

And that is why Airbnb has become the default platform for vacation rentals in nearly every market it operates in.

There are exceptions as I pointed above, but they tend to prove the rule. Vrbo built its niche around family vacation homes in the U.S., long before Airbnb came along. Sonder differentiated with serviced apartments. Oyo in India and Despegar in Latin America built scaled hospitality and travel businesses, but not in vacation rentals specifically.

And China, as in many categories, stands apart: Tujia and Xiaozhu managed to become true Airbnb rivals, but China is an exception in nearly every internet category.

(Airbnb left China in 2022 after years of struggling against local rivals better suited to a market shaped by heavy regulation, super-app distribution, and consumer demand for hands-on service.)

Which is why Gathern is so interesting. The Saudi startup has managed to do what almost no one outside China has: build a vacation rental marketplace with real market leadership against Airbnb. The company now claims 72,000 units on its platform, serving over 5 million registered users, and controlling nearly half of Saudi Arabia’s “alternative hospitality” market.

That outcome didn’t happen by default. Gathern executed on the hard, unglamorous parts of marketplace building that global players often overlook: digitizing an offline supply base, convincing owners to list, and shaping consumer behavior in a market where trust was still being built.

Airbnb’s model worked everywhere else because the category lent itself to a global winner, but in Saudi, the category itself looked different. Gathern recognized that difference and built around it.

The result is less an exception to the rule than a demonstration of how rare and difficult it is to bend those global dynamics through flawless local execution.

Another thing to note about Gathern’s rise is what it reveals about the Saudi market and its tech ecosystem.

In much of MENA, startups now think regionally from day one. Gathern did the opposite. It focused solely on Saudi Arabia. And it worked. By concentrating on a single market, the company emerged as the clear leader before even considering regional expansion.

I have shared this in some of my previous writings that Saudi alone is a large enough market to support multiple billion-dollar internet businesses.

Its economy, consumers, and investors are sufficient to take a company from seed to Series B and beyond; something no other regional ecosystem can reliably do.

Until now, the company has been funded almost entirely by local investors. Every round has been led or heavily supported by Saudi funds, including Sanabil, STV, Pinnacle Capital, Nuwa Capital, and Vision Ventures.

Numbers

These numbers are rough estimates. I’ve used multiple methods to approximate Gathern’s gross bookings and, from that, its likely revenue.

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Trying something new this time. Instead of the usual breakdowns, today’s issue is a Q&A. First one on Termsheet, but definitely one you’ll want to read.

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The first half of 2017 (or perhaps the entire year) was arguably one of the most significant periods for ecommerce in the Middle East, shaping the sector in various ways.

Indirectly, it also led to the founding of what has become the region’s highest-valued venture-backed internet company, making it relevant to today’s Termsheet.

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Towards the end of the first quarter, on March 28, 2017, Amazon announced it had acquired Souq.com, the leading ecommerce marketplace in the Middle East, for an undisclosed sum, which was later confirmed to be $580 million.

The deal was finalized after months of speculation, with multiple companies, including eBay, India’s Flipkart, and UAE retail group Majid Al Futtaim, showing interest in acquiring Souq. However, the talks with each of them eventually fell through.

Just a day before Amazon and Souq announced the acquisition, Mohammed Alabbar’s Emaar Malls confirmed it had submitted an $800 million bid for Souq.

This was less than five months after Alabbar announced Noon in partnership with the Public Investment Fund to challenge Souq.

After the failed attempt to acquire Souq, on May 11, 2017, the Alabbar-led fund announced the acquisition of UAE-based ecommerce marketplace JadoPado, with co-founder Omar Kassim joining Noon as CTO. He stayed at the company for less than three weeks.

Important Note

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On May 24, 2017, Emaar Malls acquired a 51 percent stake in the fashion ecommerce platform Namshi for $151 million.

This was the second-largest tech acquisition (third with Media.net as part of dataset) in the Middle East, after Souq, according to Termsheet Research. The two largest acquisitions in the region (at the time), Souq and Namshi, happened just two months apart.

Following the Namshi acquisition, two of its co-founders, Faraz Khalid and Hisham Zarka, left to join Noon as CEO and CTO.

In September 2017, after months of delays, Noon finally went live in the UAE and later expanded to Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Hosam Arab continued to lead Namshi after Faraz Khalid and Hisham Zarka’s departure.

About two years after acquiring the majority stake, Emaar Malls acquired the remaining 49 percent of Namshi for $129.5 million, making it Rocket Internet’s biggest exit in the Middle East.

Just two weeks after the complete acquisition, in March 2019, Hosam Arab, Namshi co-founder who built and led the company to this successful exit, announced his departure.

For a piece I was writing on MENAbytes at the time, I asked Hosam about his plans, “It’s still early days. I will be taking some time off over the next few months to spend with my family. During that time, I will be exploring ideas most likely in the digital space and most likely right here in the region,” he explained.

Six months later, in November 2019, Hosam reached out to announce his new business and its seed round. What happened between May and November is beautifully captured by Noor Sweid in her just-released book Coming of Age.

Hosam was restless. He had already founded and exited an ecommerce company, Namshi, the Middle East’s online destination for fashion and lifestyle, to Noon, in a successful transaction. Being someone who lives, sleeps and breathes ideas, he now felt stuck. Everywhere he looked, there were ideas and opportunities that were disturbing his desire to take some time off after building his last company.

But his mind was off to the races. He knew he wanted to do something in the fintech space since those had been the largest challenges he had encountered as a founder. Yet, even after narrowing it down to fintech, there was so much to do. The opportunities were endless. And there was so much competition, there were an infinite number of fintech in the MENA region now, each one tacking one of the multitude of problem the industry presented.

“My initial idea had been to take some time off. However, it was all down to timing as it was before the summer holidays and the kids were still in school so I couldn’t just set off and travel on my own. I did some thinking and one of the ideas was Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL). I had discussed it with a few people then I got this random call from a friend who said there was an investor in town who had already put money into BNPL solutions in other markets and they’d like to meet you.”

It took one more meeting in New York and the deal was done.

This BNPL investor was Melissa Guzy from Arbor Ventures. I had a hunch about it and had the Tabby founder confirm it.

Hosam was likely going to build a BNPL platform regardless, but the conversation and deal with Arbor may have pushed him to move faster.

Just over five years ago, Tabby announced its pre-product seed round. Last month, it raised funds at a $3.3 billion valuation, making it the most valuable venture-backed internet company in the Middle East.

Apart from Careem, no other venture-backed private company in the region has crossed the $1.5 billion valuation mark.

Among publicly listed internet companies in the Middle East, only Talabat; a Delivery Hero spin-off has a higher valuation than Tabby.

If we exclude Talabat, Tabby stands as the highest-valued tech company ever built in the Middle East.

In this piece, I'll try to evaluate what it's worth by comparing its offerings and numbers with international peers.

I'll also discuss the company's products, revenue sources, growth, and progress since it was founded five years ago. Think of it as a brief research report on Tabby, especially if you read it alongside the previously published BNPL piece and industry charts available on Termsheet.

Let’s start with this quick chart.

It hasn’t been widely discussed, but Tabby has grown to become the fifth-largest BNPL platform in the world, according to Termsheet Research.

There’s an important caveat, though: Tabby’s GMV is annualized. While it’s unclear what period it's annualized from, the company shared this figure in January, suggesting it’s based on December’s GMV.

Applying a 25 percent haircut to Tabby’s reported annualized GMV of $10 billion suggests its underlying GMV for 2024 could be around $7.5 billion. This figure still exceeds Zip’s estimated GMV of $6.4 billion for the same period.

Even adjusting for a 25 percent haircut, Tabby's 2024 GMV would approximate $7.5 billion, still higher than the sixth-ranked BNPL player, Zip, which did about $6.4 billion in 2024.

But more importantly, Tabby is growing much faster than any other BNPL player in the world, with approximately 67 percent growth in volume in 2024. That’s more than double the growth rate of the second-best performer, Affirm, which grew by around 30 percent.

It’s essential to note, though, that Tabby is growing from a much lower base compared to larger players like Klarna and Afterpay.

Here’s another interesting chart to put the growth in context.

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Leap wraps up today after four busy days filled with announcements. I might cover some of them in the next few issues of Termsheet. Just waiting to see if they saved the best for last.

From what I’ve heard, this year’s edition has been a big improvement. Attendees say it was better organized, had smoother access, smaller crowds than 2024 (not sure if that was by design), and no parking headaches.

Pulling off an event of this scale isn’t easy, with so many moving parts, so it’s great to see that the organizers took feedback seriously and made improvements.

One of the first tech events I attended was Wamda’s Mix n’ Mentor in Riyadh. It was small, well-organized, and incredibly effective. The format ensured that everyone walked away with something valuable; networking, insights, or mentorship.

The charm was in its simplicity. A handful of attendees, structured mentoring sessions, and organic conversations. There might have been a fireside chat or two, but the real focus was on engagement, not spectacle.

Tech events in the region have since grown, with governments or their affiliates and partners hosting many of them. But as they’ve scaled, they’ve also become overwhelming for a lot of attendees. The intimacy is gone.

That said, large-scale events have their place. They shine a spotlight on the country and its tech ecosystem, creating opportunities, as seen with Web Summit and its impact on Portugal’s startup scene.

But beyond the headlines and hype, what really makes these events special is simple: the people. The best part is still the conversations, the chance encounters, and the energy of having so many familiar faces in one place.

Now to the piece.

In early 2012, Barry Eggers, the co-founder and Partner at Lightspeed, learned about Snapchat from his daughter, who told him that high school kids were using just three apps: Angry Birds, Instagram, and Snapchat.

He knew about the first two, but it was the first time he had heard about Snapchat. Seeing his children and their friends fixated on it, the Lightspeed investor figured there was something big at play.

He told his partner Jeremy Liew about it, who started looking into who was behind the app. At the time, Snapchat had fewer than 100,000 installs. After some dead ends, Jeremy’s search led to Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel at Stanford. Through the alumni network, he connected with Spiegel and invited him to Lightspeed's office.

The Snapchat founder pitched his vision for the platform as a place for sharing authentic, private moments; unlike Facebook's public, curated nature.

Despite low download numbers, the app showed strong user engagement. Ten days later, Lightspeed invested $485,000 in what would become one of the best seed-stage deals of all time, while Spiegel was still a Stanford student.

(Lightspeed continued investing in later rounds, bringing its total investment to $8.1 million. At the time of Snap’s IPO, its stake was worth around $2 billion).

Other iconic seed investments include Sequoia’s bet on Dropbox, First Round Capital’s early investment in Uber (though it was the first institutional round, not exactly seed), and Earlybird’s backing of UiPath.

Sequoia’s investment in WhatsApp and Accel’s in Facebook also rank among the best early-stage bets, but they weren’t seed rounds.

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In this piece, I want to identify the best seed cheques of all time in the Middle East & North Africa. The region’s ecosystem is still young, but a few deals have already delivered outstanding returns for investors.

Of course, nothing on the scale of Snap, Dropbox, Uber, or UiPath, but still home runs in their own right.

To do this, I’ll rely on two key datasets, along with additional insights:

1. The biggest acquisitions in the Middle East & North Africa

2. The highest-valued tech and internet companies in the region

The highest-valued companies are relevant because, in some cases, there have been secondary share sales. In others, we might just look at future potential, if nothing else.

I have also spoken to people close to some of the companies and deals being discussed to gather historical valuations and estimate returns. A small part of the numbers presented here are not publicly available and, as far as I can tell, are being shared for the first time.

Some of these numbers are based on estimates so they may not be perfectly accurate.

(I have previously also covered some of the fund returners of the region in another piece.)

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Here’s a quick breakdown of some of the biggest highlights in tech and startups in the Middle East & North Africa from January.

Public Markets: Nice One surges to the top
Venture Capital:

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A 26-year-old Australian woman moved to Dubai in 2001, with a straightforward plan: work for a year, save enough for a property down payment back home, and then move back to Melbourne.

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The majority of information in the list has been sourced from publicly available data.

The exact valuation of some of the companies is not listed. Their placement in the list is based on estimates and could be wrong.

Please don’t forget to check the notes at the end of every section.

(Last updated on Feb 13, 2025).

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There’s a little product I have been wanting to work on but after a few failed attempts with Replit, and a few other AI web dev agents, I gave up.

It was not something I could’ve spent a lot of my time or money on, as I was not sure about the commercial potential, but it was still something I wanted to try my hand at.

In one of my recent conversations with a friend, I told him about it and shared a poorly designed sketch.

His first reaction was, "Why don’t you do it on Substack?"

I immediately responded with a firm no explaining how it was not possible due to the limitations of the platform.

And put the idea on hold.

The suggestion this friend made had nothing to do with Termsheet, but it got me thinking.

I have held back from adding a few things I have been thinking about, on Termsheet, mainly because of Substack’s limitations.

But after this friend’s suggestion, I decided to give it a go. Starting today, there are three new sections on Termsheet.

They’ll live exclusively on the website (not emailed) due to their high publishing frequency (hundreds of pieces over the coming weeks).

Nearly all content in these sections will be reserved for paying subscribers.

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Here are the details.

a) Charts: Data visualizations highlighting key metrics and figures of technology businesses and trends in emerging markets, mainly MENA.

b) Databases: Curated datasets such as lists, tables, and trackers on startups, and venture capital in MENA.

c) Atoms: Quick insights and answers addressing key questions about internet businesses in emerging markets.

Click any section name above to preview published entries. There’s much more in the pipeline.

As Substack is not made for this, the experience esp. around navigation and search is a bit clunky, and Databases content won’t display cleanly on the phone.

(I am trying to figure out a workaround but that would probably take some time).

For sharing feedback, please reply to this email, message me on LinkedIn, or DM on X.

Now to the piece.

Fund returners

In 2012, Firat Ileri, an Associate at Hummingbird Ventures, who now leads the firm as its Managing Partner, connected Mehmet Ecevit, a gaming founder looking to start something new, with his MIT roommate Kaan Karamanci, who wanted to move on from his family’s textile business, and suggested they start a gaming company, offering to fund it.

The two teamed up with Alpay Koralturk as their third co-founder. And Gram Games was born.

Hummingbird led its $2 million pre-seed.

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The criteria is that the company is headquartered in the Middle East & North Africa Please don’t forget to read the notes at the end of every section for more context.

(Zomato UAE’s $172 million acquisition by Delivery Hero is not part of this list).

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