The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) focused EdTech startup Manara announced raising $3 million in a pre-seed funding round led by payment giant Stripe to grow the tech talent pool in the MENA region.
More on Manara
Manara was founded in 2021 by Iliana Montauk and Laila Abudahi to unlock the human potential of the Middle East and North Africa. It uses a digital platform to provide a cohort-based training program for computer science students and software engineers, connecting them to big tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. The platform connects MENA engineers with a community of world-class tech professionals who provide mentorship and network to help them secure top tech jobs.
Manara poises itself as a social impact EdTech startup offering training to anyone that qualifies for the program. While its students do not pay any tuition fee for the program, they are required to commit 10% of their salary in their first two years of employment to the company.
Relating the need for a platform like Manara with her experience, Laila Abudahi, Co-founder & CTO of Manara, said, “I grew up in Palestine and realized quickly that to become a world-class engineer, I needed to work on highly scaled products with experienced teams. After I reached my dream through lots of trial and error, I wanted to make it easier for people back home to do the same. Ultimately, these engineers will become the CTOs and senior developers that the region needs in order to accelerate the growing success of its tech ecosystem.”
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The startup claims 86% of its trained engineers receive job offers within five months of graduating, and those who already have a job get up to a 300% pay hike after the training.
With the new funding, Manara plans to scale its existing cohort-based solution from 60 engineers to 6,000 engineers per year. The startup also plans to launch a self-service product for interview practice, networking, and mentorship, targeting software engineers from across the globe.
Participant of the pre-seed round includes LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman; Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator; Eric Ries, founder of Lean Startup; and Mudassir Sheikha, founder and CEO of Careem.
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Iliana Montauk, Co-founder and CEO of Manara, talked about the funding and the excellent caliber of investors it has attracted, “We received more appetite from investors than we could accommodate, signaling an increasing interest from Silicon Valley in platforms that facilitate online and offline communities, and solutions to access highly skilled talent from emerging markets.”
What They Are Saying
Carlos Espinal, the Managing Partner at Seedcamp, said,
“Europe’s tech sector is growing quickly. There’s a massive need for new solutions to access talent, whether remote or onsite. The Middle East and North Africa is an obvious fit because of their proximity and time zones. We’re very excited to back the first startup bridging these two markets — and are particularly enthusiastic about the founders’ commitment to women engineers.