According to data source Magnitt, startups in the Middle East, Africa, Pakistan, and Turkey raised $5 billion in record fundraising in the first half of 2022, which is equivalent to 70% of the total investment raised in the entire year 2021. Start-ups in Mena neared the record $2bn mark over 300 transactions in the first half of 2022, growing by 46 per cent year on year, Magnitt said. This accounted for 62 per cent of total funds raised last year.
In the first six months of the year there was a preponderance of larger-sized rounds with more than 40 per cent ($2bn) of the capital raised in mega deals, which are valued at more than $100 million, Magnitt said.
“Prevalence of larger-sized rounds led to a sizeable increase in the value of average fund rounds across emerging venture markets [EVMs],” Philip Bahoshy, founder and chief executive of Magnitt, said.
As economies in the Middle East and North Africa continue to recover from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, investors are allocating more cash to promising start-ups, which in turn is helping the ecosystem grow and mature further.
Total funding secured by Mena start-ups more than doubled to about $864m in the first quarter of 2022, with the number of deals rising by 16 per cent, according to Magnitt.
Start-ups in the UAE accounted for 27.3 per cent of all deals closed across the Mena region and 34.4 per cent of all funding raised.
Dubai alone is home to nearly 39 per cent of the fastest-growing start-ups in the region, the Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy said in a recent report.
Turkey recorded an average fund round of $13.9m, while the mean fund size in Mena went up to $8.2m with three mega deals closed by cryptocurrency platform Rain, F&B start-up Foodics and Pure Harvest and more than 20 deals of more than $20m.
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