DUBAI: Global Ventures and Middle East Venture Partners have led a $7.5 million investment in Yodawy, an Egyptian online pharmacy platform.
Also backing the Series B funding drive were Cairo-based firms Algebra Ventures and CVentures, San Francisco-based P1 Ventures and Saudi Arabia’s Athaal Angel Investors Group.
Founded in 2018, Yodawy offers an e-commerce marketplace for pharmacies to sell their products. Patients can use the service to order medicines and personal care products and have them delivered in less than 45 minutes.
It offers products from a network of around 3,000 pharmacies, has around 2 million users and has processed some 800,000 orders in the last four years.
Founded by Karim Khashaba, Yasser AbdelGawad and Sherief El-Feky, the company boasts a management team with experience at some of the world’s largest companies, including Booz & Company, Procter & Gamble, Reckitt Benckiser and Yahoo.
Karim Khashaba, Yodawy’s founder and CEO, said in a statement: “We are thrilled to have completed this funding round. It comes at a time of huge growth for Yodawy, as we continue to add more pharmacies and insurers to our platform. Yodawy is powering a digital health care revolution in Egypt.”
Amal Enan, managing director at Global Ventures, added: “The burden of health care expenditures disproportionately fell on Egyptian households for decades. The accelerated growth and commitment to medical insurance today presents an attractive market opportunity for enabling payers and the Pharma-Retail industry where Egyptians are spending a combined $6 billion a year.”
Dubai investors lead $7.5m funding for Egyptian online pharmacy
https://arab.news/v5cy9
Dubai investors lead $7.5m funding for Egyptian online pharmacy
- It offers products from a network of around 3,000 pharmacies, has around 2 million users and has processed some 800,000 orders in the last four years
Arab Cities Culture and Creative Industries Index launched
- UNESCO official says the index ‘strengthens the evidence base on culture and creative industries in the Arab region’
- It is planned as an advanced policy-enabling tool designed to position culture and creative industries as core components of future governance models
DUBAI: The Mohammed bin Rashid School of Government launched the 2026 edition of the Arab Cities Culture and Creative Industries Index on Wednesday.
Building on UNESCO’s frameworks to quantify the contributions that culture and creativity make to urban development in the Arab region, the index is the first regionally grounded and evidence-based framework.
Ernesto Ottone Ramirez, UNESCO’s assistant director-general for culture; Hala Badri, director-general of Dubai Culture; and Ali Al-Marri, MBRSG’s executive president, attended a special panel at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, during which the index was announced.
Welcoming the launch of the Index, Ramirez said: “It strengthens the evidence base on culture and creative industries in the Arab region, providing reliable, comparable, and policy-relevant figures.
“Such data is essential to guide public investment, inform decision-making, support inclusive cultural policies, and monitor culture’s contribution to sustainable development.”
The launch marks a definitive transition from ambition-led strategies to data-informed cultural policymaking, according to Al-Marri, who said: “By positioning culture as a core component of governance and a productive economic sector with measurable impact, we provide Arab cities with the tools to benchmark their creative ecosystems against global standards while respecting our unique regional context.”
According to a media release, the index is planned as an advanced policy-enabling tool designed to position culture and creative industries as core components of future governance models, marking a significant paradigm shift in which culture is recognized not merely as a social asset but as a strategic pillar of economic resilience, innovation, and inclusive growth.
Badri emphasized that the launch of the index represents an important step in highlighting culture’s role in advancing societies and positioning the cultural and creative industries as key contributors to the emirate’s knowledge- and innovation-driven economy.
