In the second episode of 'Unplugged,' we get up close and personal with Abdullah Mutawi of Taylor Wessing. Abdullah is English-qualified lawyer with a knack for seed and early-stage investments. Dubbed as 'one of the MENA region's top corporate lawyers with deep ties in technology, media, and communications,' he also wears the hat of cofounder and chairman at Dubai Angels Investors. Ever wondered why someone with such a corporate flair was once drawn to criminal law? Abdullah spills the beans on that and more. He takes us on a journey through the evolution of deal-making, highlighting the ebb ..read more

Welcome to Unplugged, our fireside chat series, where we host casual conversations with some of the region's boldest and brightest game changers. In our first recorded episode, Nuwa Capital's Stephanie Nour Prince chats with Mustafa Koita, founder of Koita Milk. In 2016, Mustafa turned frustration into inspiration when he launched Koita Milk. He wanted to offer his children, Serena, Danyal, and Sophia, a better option when it came to organic and fresh foods, especially Milk. And so started a journey of research, travel, strategizing a cross-country operation - and of course, building the brand ..read more

Before moving over to the investing side, Arzan.vc's Laith Zraikat was the cofounder of Jeeran.com along along with Omar Koudsi. Jeeran, founded in 2000, was one of MENA's earliest and at some stage most trafficked and valuable digital businesses in the region. The company started out as a free hosting platform and eventually evolved into a regional blogging platform and then after an additional pivot, into a reviews site which ultimately proved to be unsuccessful. I met Laith Zraikat early in my career in 2008. At the time, I was an Associate at Accelerator Technology Holdings - the pre-curso ..read more

There is a clear mismatch between the demands of the modern day traveler and the available supply of apartments. As a corporate traveler, Aahan Bhojani sought the comfort of a homely apartment with the conveniences of a hotel, something that proved difficult to find. A year later, Aahan and his team had brought to market the first set of Silkhaus branded units.  In this episode, Aahan takes us through how his vision evolved throughout Silkhaus’ first year in operations and how understanding the needs of all his stakeholders created new potential for the business, enabled by instilling agi ..read more

Art and Web 3.0 are two spaces where community is a key driver for growth. And through both, we have also seen the meaning of 'ownership' evolve. While further digging into the Web 3.0 space earlier this year, we felt the need to explore the unfolding of NFTs from a creator's perspective, so we reached out to Kristel Bechara, an award-winning contemporary artist whose work has been displayed globally. Kristel was one of the first artists to create NFT art in the Middle East, and has developed Arts DAO's debut NFT drop, dubbed "The Ethernal Gates". In this episode, we take a bit of a ..read more

Traditionally, startups have had to face large delays prior to launch due to the need to build infrastructure and core back-end functionalities in-house, such as the acceptance of payments. This takes up valuable resources, and shrinks the amount of time developers have to build the startup’s core product/service. Realizing this issue is faced by every startup and can be commoditized, many infrastructure-as-a-service / API-first startups emerged, enabling startups to outsource these core functionalities and add them via third-party integrations, making their path to market faster and easier. H ..read more

The tech ecosystem across MENA is young but rapidly evolving. As recently as a few years ago, startups were restricted to fundraise from limited sources of capital, predominantly from a handful of VCs or angel investors. Today, with increasingly more capital entering the ecosystem, the capital base has diversified, with an innovative set of players such as super angels, solo GPs, and syndicates arriving and changing the game. Investment in MENA-based companies has more than doubled in the last 2 years, going from ~$1B in investments in 2020 to ~$2.6B in 2021 according to Magnitt. With the incr ..read more

Two years ago, many of us went through some sort of a reset in terms of how we think of, prepare, and consume food. With more time spent at home, some resorted to making their own bread and nut butters, while food delivery still soared. This, however, may have only acted as an accelerant to an existing trend: MENA is witnessing an increased adoption of health-conscious food choices, in line with global trends: over 60% of the region’s population has adopted a healthier lifestyle over 2020/21, according to PWC. With people increasingly back on the go, allocating time to prepare or order the rig ..read more

The global pet care industry was estimated to be at c. $200B in 2020. It is, in fact, larger than the baby care market (c. $70B) and trailing shortly behind the child care industry (c. $270B), with pet owners spending more and at a higher rate on their pets. In MENA, the market remains a bit of a curiosity, with pet ownership seemingly on the rise and a tangible change in perception of what taking care of a pet entails. In the last two years alone, there has been a flurry of new products and services on offer to satisfy every pet’s dietary, accessories, and care needs. In Episode 14 of our pod ..read more

Similar to the healthcare industry, the mental health care and provision system was built for and within an environment that has since greatly shifted. While the mental healthcare system has traditionally depended on therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, the supply of qualified professionals is thin, particularly in MENA. Research in the space has stalled, particularly on specificity of treatments or discovery of new treatments as a whole, and data tends to be extremely scarce. This is, again, even more so the case in MENA. By and large, the mental health and wellness space will need t ..read more