Doushesh Secures Pre-Seed Funding to Reinvent Syria’s Classifieds Landscape

Editorial Team

Last updated 8-01-2026

3 min

Doushesh has begun 2026 with a pre-seed round, signalling momentum in Syria’s startup scene.

The company appointed Adnan Khabbaz to refine the platform for local online buying and selling.

Focused on reliability, Doushesh aims to combat fake listings and enhance user trust in Syria.

Their 2026 priorities include expanding across provinces and improving credibility with stricter verification.

If successful, Doushesh could establish a new standard for local digital marketplaces in Syria.

Doushesh, a classifieds platform based in Damascus, has kicked off 2026 with a pre-seed round that many in Syria’s small but determined startup community see as a welcome sign of momentum. It’s not every day you hear about early-stage funding going into digital ventures there, so this one naturally caught my eye. At Arageek we often chat with founders from across the region, and the same theme comes up again and again: building trust in markets where informality rules is always a bit of a faff.

Alongside the investment, the company brought in Adnan Khabbaz as a Partner and Technical Advisor. He’s known in regional tech circles for helping scale consumer‑facing platforms, and his arrival suggests Doushesh isn’t just tinkering around the edges. The team seems quite focused on tightening the nuts and bolts of online buying and selling in a country where most exchanges still happen through word of mouth or handwritten signs on shop doors. I reckon having someone with hands‑on experience in platform growth could make a meaningful difference, especially in such a fragmented landscape.

What stood out to me is that Doushesh keeps positioning itself as a “local‑first” marketplace. Instead of chasing big flashy numbers, the platform is trying to build reliability into every corner of the experience—something users in Syria have long been asking for. And believe it or not, the company is doubling down on measures to weed out fake or misleading listings this year. Anyone who has tried to buy a used car or even a fridge in similar markets knows how quickly things can go sideways. One mismatched phone number and… well, you know?

The team has laid out two main priorities for 2026. One is expanding more evenly across Syria’s provinces without pushing for unnatural, hyper‑fast growth. On the flip side, they’re investing in retention by improving listing quality and boosting credibility through stricter verification tools. It’s not the most glamorous side of tech, but it’s spot on for a marketplace trying to become the safest and most dependable option on the ground. I’m not a fan of overpromising in early‑stage startups, but their strategy feels refreshingly grounded—definately more practical than the usual “scale first, fix later” mentality.

If Doushesh manages to pull this off, it could set a new baseline for how local digital platforms operate in Syria. And for a market that’s been rebuilding bit by bit, that’s no small step.

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