Middle East completes a dynamic decade of entrepreneurship

Since 2009, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has come a long way in making its mark on the global entrepreneurship map. The following are some of the biggest milestones of the MENA ecosystem over the past decade as compiled by Arabnet, one of the region’s leading events and insights companies focused on technology business and innovation.

2013: RiseUp Summit launches in Egypt

Given the political instability, this was a year when many Egyptian youth had a pessimistic view of their future. Abdelhameed Sharara and Con O’Donnell wanted to change this, so they founded RiseUp Summit, dubbed the country’s largest entrepreneurship and innovation event. According to Entrepreneur ME magazine, RiseUp made 600,000 Egyptian pounds ($33,000) in revenue that first year. Six years on, that figure has grown to an estimated 23 million pounds ($1.25 million).

2016: A year of firsts

This was quite a big year for the region, with many notable launches, including the Small and Medium Enterprises General Authority (Monsha’at) in Saudi Arabia, the Oman Technology Fund, MENA’s 500 Startups and the Dubai Future Foundation. To add to that, the UAE’s Careem raised $350 million, making it the Middle East’s first unicorn.

2017: Noon.com goes live

A local e-commerce giant to rival the likes of Amazon and Souq, Mohamed Alabbar, the Emaar Properties chairman, invested a mammoth $1 billion in Noon.com. “It’s the biggest risk in my life that I’ve taken,” said Alabbar at the 2019 edition of the TiE Dubai Summit. “For me to be able to even be brave enough, after making billions in my real estate business, I really (didn’t) have to go into digital. Why should I? (But) I cannot accept that our region will be taken over. I will not accept it.”

2017: Amazon completes its acquisition of Souq.com

Coincidentally, Alabbar had initially been interested in acquiring Souq.com, the online retailer founded in 2005. But it ended up going to Amazon for $580 million.

2019

The top story to come out of 2019? It could well be March’s announcement that ride-hailing app Uber acquired its MENA counterpart Careem for $3.1 billion. This is to date the largest technology industry transaction in the Middle East.