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

Instagram Redraws Its Wordmark And The Internet Reads “Instagzam”

Instagram’s first wordmark refresh in a decade arrives with new fonts, a restrained gradient — and a Reddit verdict of sidegrade.

Published

4 days ago

August 14, 2026

Nour Nasir

Instagram

Although Instagram’s famous camera icon hasn’t changed, the company has refreshed the handwritten wordmark at the top of its app. This is the first redesign we’ve seen in ten years, and one the internet promptly set about renaming.

“The wordmark at the top of the app hasn’t changed in 10 years, so it was time for a refresh,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri wrote in a post on August 13, describing the new version as “cleaner and more modern” while keeping references to the original design.

Instagram says its team explored hundreds of options — all-caps lettering, camera-inspired concepts, even literal handwriting — before returning to script. “Script reflects individuality, so referencing that felt right,” Instagram director of product design Jasmine Probst said in Meta’s announcement. “The new wordmark is bolder and simpler, with touches of unexpectedness. It cues individual expression, a personal voice, both of which have always been core to Instagram”.

The wordmark is part of a broader brand overhaul: an updated Instagram Sans typeface, two new fonts — the hand-drawn Instagram Pen and Instagram Mono — plus refreshed motion and layouts, and more restrained use of the signature gradient. The wordmark is rolling out globally now, with the rest arriving throughout 2026 and beyond.

Also Read: Spotify Will Now Tell You If Your Favorite Artist Isn’t Real

The design mixes cursive and print lettering, some characters connected and others floating free. That hybrid approach, combined with unusually shaped “s” and “r” characters, led some users to conclude the logo actually reads “Instagzam”. On the r/logodesign subreddit, one user said the wordmark looked “fan-made,” like something built in Canva; another called it “an unsettling mix of manuscript and cursive”; a third summarized it as a “sidegrade” — or, inevitably, a “zidegrade”.

Not everyone was hostile to the new look. Some found the half-cursive design stylish and surprisingly readable, while others called it an improvement on its predecessor, and one commenter argued Instagram was simply adopting minimalist branding later than everyone else. Either way, the platform now has a refreshed identity, three updated fonts, and an unofficial new pronunciation.