Dubai startup MoveSouq closes $3m funding round

Dubai-based home services startup MoveSouq.com has closed a $3m funding round at an undisclosed valuation, it announced on Tuesday.

The funding round was led by venture capital company AddVenture and is the company’s third, after its seed and angel rounds in 2013 and 2015.

Founded in 2013, MoveSouq is an online marketplace that connects users in UAE and Qatar to moving, home services and insurance companies.

The amount raised in the new round will be used to expand its services to new cities in the Middle East, MoveSouq said in a statement.

The investment will also be used to build new verticals on the platform.

“The home services market in the region represents a significant untapped opportunity, estimated at $5bn per year in the GCC alone, and consumers are starting to buy these services online,” said MoveSouq.com CEO Bana Shomali.

“We will utilise the new funding to aggressively go after this opportunity and maintain our first-mover advantage.”

In the last year, the company helped over 50,000 households in Dubai and Abu Dhabi find and book their services online, it said.

“We are fascinated by the strong uptake in online platforms for local services in different parts of the world, from Australia to Latin America,” said Pavel Terentiev, partner at AddVenture.

“The market for home and local services is a huge opportunity in absolute terms, and the penetration of online transactions in this market still lags to that within other segments like entertainment, travel, transportation or food consumption.

“We therefore believe MoveSouq.com provides fundamental value to its users, and has a proven business case,” he added.

Dubai-based online startups are seeing an increase in funding in recent years as the regional e-commerce market booms.

On Wednesday, Dubai-based recording app Wrappup also confirmed that it had closed a seed funding round led by MENA focussed venture capital firm BECO Capital.

The size of the round, which also included investments from 500 Startups, Arzan VC, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Leap Ventures partner Hala Fadel, Dubai Angel Investors, Odin Financial Advisors and WOMENA, was not disclosed.

Read more: BECO Capital leads investment round for Dubai-based Wrappup