A weekly round up of the top headlines from the digital sector in MENA, covering startups, corporate and the public sector.

Investments (Local and Global)

Eksab, Cairo’s Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) platform, announced a “six-figure seed investment” from 500 Startups http://bit.ly/2FdZ4DP 

Urent, P2P care rental platform, raised undisclosed funding from Seed Group, The Private Office of Sheikh Saeed bin Ahmed Al Maktoum, and will launch in Dubai this month. The startup has acquired RTA approval http://bit.ly/2XhEVH6 

Averos, Saudi tracking startup, Pre-Series A funding round from Saudi Aramco’s Wa’ed Ventures (amount undisclosed) http://bit.ly/2ZsKTlO 

Zbooni, Dubai social commerce startup, raises $1.1M led by the Chalhoub Group and B&Y Venture Partners http://bit.ly/2WSdfsU

Swvl, Egypt’s mass transit startup, raises $42M from Vostok, BECO Capital, MSA and Endeavor Catalyst https://bloom.bg/2WVzwRE

Venturesouq joins $6M series A round, lead by Impulse VC, into GuestReady, UK based platform for real estate management http://bit.ly/2KrVt95

Arzooo, Indian retail tech startup, raises $1M in pre-series A lead by Jabbar Internet Group http://bit.ly/31D12a4 

Gympass, Brazilian fitness classes subscription service, raises $300M from Softbank Vision Fund and SoftBank Latin America Fund https://prn.to/2FoCtVd

Collective Health, US, raises $105M in funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund http://bit.ly/2FsM5OL

1 Acquisition

Mubawab, Morocco’s real-estate portal, acquire’s Jumia House operations in Morocco, Tunisia & Algeria (Mubawab owned by Dubai’s EPMG) http://bit.ly/2ZvA82b 

Sector News

World Bank grants $175M (two loans) to Tunisia, $100M for “digital transformation inside the Tunisian administration” and $75M “projects of emerging projects and SMEs” http://bit.ly/2MUNGCP

All mention of this article + posts suddenly disappeared, but we’re keeping it here for reference that they tried. > > Noon launches free delivery starting today across the UAE with no minimum spend (this is on the heels of Amazon launching Prime in the UAE last week) http://bit.ly/2IVmnTB

Microsoft to launch two new data centers in the UAE http://bit.ly/2XmyCBX

Long Reads

Report: Artificial Intelligence in Saudi Arabia, Report by Microsoft and EY (AR) http://bit.ly/2KrDobp

Further Readings

Etisalat to invest ~$1.2B for network upgrades in 2019 http://bit.ly/2x4oE9P

Emirates Investment Authority (sovereign) bought $630M stake into Du Holding (Telecom) from Mamoura Diversified Global Holding (previously Mubadala Development Co) and General Investments. The Emirates Investment Authority held 39.9% of Du, while Mamoura owned 19.92% https://bloom.bg/2FdDora 

Moroccan Govt looks to sell a further 8% of its shares in Maroc Telecom, cutting down its ownership from 30% to 22%. The sales comes as part of increased privatization move. (AR) http://bit.ly/31BD3s0

DAAL Investments, Saudi, signs MoU with Azerbijan’s Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies http://bit.ly/2wUvCOj

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