Saudi Arabia was the MENA leader in VC funding in the first half of 2023, a report by the research and analysis firm MAGNiTT said in its recently-released report.
Fintech and e-commerce still reign supreme in the region, with the two sectors dominating venture capital financing in the Middle East and North Africa during the first half of this year, the report found.
In the first half of 2023, Saudi Arabia ranked first in terms of the funding value with $446M driven by two MEGA deals amounting to $156M and $133M by E-commerce/Retail startups Floward and Nana, the MAGNiTT report said. Egyptians startups were the second largest recipients of capital deployed with $305M thanks to Egypt’s Halan $260M MEGA round. UAE came as a distant third, with the gap between the country and KSA shifting from $85M in favor of the UAE in H1 2022 to $207M in surplus for Saudi Arabia in the first half of 2023.
“The fact that the startup ecosystem in the Kingdom has experienced rapid growth over the past five years and positioned itself as a strong competitor in the region is a data-backed reality, however 2023 did not keep up the 2022 growth pace. While the slower performance is a reality for the country, it still surpassed its MENA peers in total capital deployed in the first half of the year,” the report said.
The report also found that at the industry level, all top five industries experienced a double-digit fall in their number of deals YoY in the first half of 2023. E-commerce/Retail was the most preferred among industries in deals and funding capturing a share of 20% and 83% respectively of the Kingdom’s metrics.
