News

Taager Secures $6.75M To Expand Social eCommerce In MENA

The Pre-Series B funding round was led by Norrsken22 and will allow the company to enhance the platform while strengthening its data tools and team.

Published

2 years ago

February 11, 2025

Nour Nasir

taager secures $6.75 million to expand social ecommerce in mena

Riyadh-based social eCommerce platform Taager has successfully raised $6.75 million in a Pre-Series B funding round. The investment, led by Africa-focused growth fund Norrsken22, will help the company expand its operations further across the Middle East.

Taager allows would-be entrepreneurs to start their own dropshipping business, providing products, storage, shipping, and customer collection. However, unlike traditional platforms, Taager specializes in “social eCommerce” — a business model where products are bought and sold directly through social media platforms.

Social commerce merges online shopping with social interactions, significantly reshaping traditional online customer journeys. Globally, social eCommerce is projected to generate $2.5 trillion in revenue this year. In the MENA, it has already surpassed $14 billion, accounting for over 30% of all eCommerce sales.

Although MENA’s young, tech-savvy population is already purchasing products via social eCommerce, would-be entrepreneurs often face challenges starting a business in the region. Supply chains are complex, capital is limited, and gaining insights into the diverse range of consumer bases can be tough.

Taager tackles these pain points by offering an all-in-one platform that provides sellers with access to trending products, pricing and marketing insights, logistics solutions, embedded financing, and multi-market payment processing.

Also Read: Top E-Commerce Websites In The Middle East In 2025

Leveraging data gathered from thousands of merchants and millions of customers, Taager also uses machine learning to enhance product recommendations, optimize pricing, and predict buyer behavior. The company is also integrating generative AI into its operations, using AI-driven sales agents to improve efficiency while keeping costs in check.

The eventual goal is to establish Taager as a central hub for demand generation and data-driven decision-making in MENA’s social eCommerce ecosystem. Mohamed Elhorishy, Taager’s Co-founder and CEO, emphasized the company’s ambitious mission: “Our goal is to make it possible for anyone to launch and scale a successful social eCommerce business. We support women, young entrepreneurs, and low-income individuals in building sustainable sources of income. On average, Taager merchants have seen a 2.5x increase in profitability. Our platform has helped thousands achieve financial independence and stability”.

So far, Taager has supported over 45,000 online social sellers. With this latest round of funding, the company plans to strengthen its data tools, expand its product offerings, and grow its expert team to accelerate its regional impact.

News

Microsoft Plans $10 Billion-Plus Gulf Expansion Despite Iran Conflict

Security is shaping Microsoft’s approach, from resilience work with governments to what it will say about how the money splits by country.

Published

4 days ago

September 24, 2026

Nour Nasir

Microsoft

Microsoft is planning more than $10 billion of investment across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait through 2030, Vice Chair and President Brad Smith told Reuters, calling the spending schedule aggressive. The Iranian conflict that began on February 28 has not persuaded the company to scale back.

“We’re sustaining all the investments we planned to make before this conflict started, and we are in fact adding to them,” Smith said. The $10 billion-plus total does not, however, show how large those additions are.

The investment, which Smith described as part of Microsoft’s continued infrastructure expansion, is aimed at cloud and AI infrastructure and at the company’s growing regional operations. Microsoft also intends to put more than $400 million into subsea and terrestrial connectivity across the Middle East by 2030.

The spending fits the region’s own ambitions too. Gulf governments have been investing heavily in AI infrastructure as part of a push to diversify their economies beyond oil and gas and turn themselves into global technology hubs. Major cloud and AI providers have been drawn in part by the land and relatively low-cost energy on offer.

Microsoft is widening its partnerships with regional AI companies, though not on identical terms. In 2024, it invested $1.5 billion in Abu Dhabi-based G42 for a minority stake, and Smith currently sits on G42’s board. Saudi Arabia’s Humain and Qatar’s Qai are working with Microsoft on selected priority areas, but Smith said the company does not plan to make capital investments in either.

Also Read: Egypt’s Mobile Wallets Are Booming, But Cash Still Has Power

The conflict has added another strand to Microsoft’s work in the region. Since it began, Smith said, the company has supported regional partners with digital resilience assessments, and it is now working with Gulf countries through a digital resilience initiative focused on preparedness and the protection of critical data.

So far, the company has given no country-by-country breakdown of the investment, citing security among other factors. So while the headline figure is public, how Microsoft divides the spending among the four countries is not.