Rekaz Secures $5M to Revolutionise MENA’s Service SMBs with AI-Powered Platform

I'll admit it: when it comes to small and medium-sized businesses (or "SMBs," as our American cousins say) getting online, things sometimes still feel a bit of a faff. Loads of tools, spreadsheets all over the place, and manual processes that leave business owners tearing their hair out—well… I mean, it's hardly ideal.

That's precisely where Rekaz, a Saudi-based startup, thinks they've spotted a massive opportunity, and it seems they're onto something. Just this week, Rekaz announced they've bagged a tidy $5 million in seed funding. COTU Ventures led the round, alongside investment from Impact46, Shorooq, Numrah Capital, plus a group of angel investors—quite the backing for a young startup.

Rekaz is essentially doing for service-based businesses what Shopify did for online shopping, according to its co-founder and CEO Abdulrahman Alomran. The platform neatly bundles everything—from scheduling and subscriptions to client management and payments—into one sleek solution aimed specifically at businesses like gyms, salons, and mobile providers. And believe it or not, they've already processed well over a million appointments and subscriptions for around 7,000 businesses across the region.

I reckon there's good reason investors are keen. Amir Farha from COTU Ventures called what Rekaz is doing a “massive, overlooked problem.” He's probably spot on there, as traditional software has typically left small and medium service companies stuck in digital limbo. Abdulrahman and his co-founder, CTO Abdulaziz Alkharashi, are aiming to fix exactly that problem.

The clever bit is how they've fused intuitive software with AI-powered insights and personalised onboarding that matches different workflows—businesses can hit the ground running straight away without too much technical faffing around. Alkharashi points out that Rekaz has been specifically built around the real-world needs of service industries—“flexible and intelligent,” as he puts it.

With the cash secured, Rekaz wants to double down on upgrading its tech, especially enhancing AI capabilities, and deepen its market presence not just in the GCC, but throughout the wider region.

On the flip side, while I've seen lots of ambitious startups raise bundles of cash recently, the true test is always in execution. Will Rekaz genuinely transform the daily grind of MENA's vast service economy? Shorooq Partner Yousef Albabtain certainly thinks so—calling the platform a "game-changer" and the potential “foundational layer” underpinning thousands of service SMBs across the region.

At Arageek, I love a good story about startups tackling genuinely hefty problems. Watching a company turn fragmented chaos into coordinated order is something we're always chufed to bits about here. For Rekaz now, it's all eyes on progress—and whether they really can deliver on the promise investors have bought into so enthusiastically.

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