Dubai-based everyday app talabat has launched Open Door, a regional startup enablement programme designed to give early-stage companies the opportunity to test their technologies against real business challenges and potentially scale successful solutions across talabat’s operations in the Middle East and North Africa.

The programme will operate across talabat’s eight markets, with its next UAE cohort launching in September, followed by cohorts in Oman and Bahrain later in 2026.

Unlike a traditional accelerator built primarily around mentorship or classroom-based support, Open Door is designed to place startups inside a live commercial environment. Selected companies will work directly with talabat teams, test their products against operational challenges and, where pilots demonstrate a strong fit, explore longer-term commercial partnerships and regional expansion.

“The region has an incredibly ambitious startup community, and one of the most valuable assets established companies can offer is an opportunity to solve real problems at scale,” said May Youssef, Regional Senior Director of Corporate Affairs at talabat.

“Through Open Door, we are creating a clearer pathway for startups to engage with our business, test their ideas in a live environment and, where there is a strong fit, grow alongside us across the region,” she added.

Open Door Gives Startups Access to Real-World Testing

The programme is intended to bridge a common gap facing early-stage technology companies: moving from a working product or promising idea to proving that technology inside a large commercial operation.

Through Open Door, startups will gain access to business challenges emerging from talabat’s regional and local operations, allowing them to demonstrate whether their solutions can perform in real operating conditions.

Successful pilots could then develop into longer-term partnerships and potentially be scaled into additional talabat markets.

For talabat, the programme creates another channel for identifying emerging technologies capable of improving its operations. For startups, it provides access to an established platform with millions of customers and operations spanning multiple MENA economies.

The company said the initiative forms part of its broader commitment to entrepreneurship and the regional technology ecosystem, providing emerging companies with operational exposure, expertise and access to markets.

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QuikBot to Test Autonomous Delivery Robots in Dubai

Open Door has already produced one pilot in the UAE.

Talabat has signed an MoU with Singapore-headquartered DeepTech company QuikBot, which develops autonomous delivery robots designed for high-rise buildings.

Under the pilot, the companies will test robotic deliveries at Dubai Digital Park in Dubai Silicon Oasis.

Talabat riders will transport orders to the building, where they will hand them over to an autonomous robot that completes the final stage of the journey and delivers the order to the customer’s door.

The model targets a specific challenge in last-mile logistics: completing deliveries inside large buildings after a rider has reached the destination.

The pilot gives QuikBot an opportunity to test its technology within talabat’s existing delivery operations while providing talabat with a real-world environment for evaluating autonomous delivery technology.

Programme to Expand Across Talabat’s MENA Footprint

Following its UAE activities, Open Door is scheduled to launch cohorts in Oman and Bahrain later this year as part of a broader rollout covering talabat’s regional footprint.

Talabat currently operates across the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt.

Founded in Kuwait in 2004, the company has grown from a food-delivery platform into an everyday app covering food, groceries and other consumer essentials. It served more than seven million monthly active customers as of December 2025.

Talabat is headquartered in Dubai and completed its initial public offering on the Dubai Financial Market in December 2024. The company operates as a subsidiary of Germany-based Delivery Hero.

That footprint gives Open Door the potential to provide startups with something beyond an individual accelerator cohort: a pathway to test a solution in one market before potentially deploying it across several countries.

For startups capable of solving challenges relevant across talabat’s network, the programme could turn an initial commercial pilot into a regional opportunity.

Talabat said Open Door also supports its contribution to UN Sustainable Development Goal 8, which focuses on economic growth, productive employment and entrepreneurship.

With the programme, the company is positioning its operational scale as an asset not only for its own technology development but also for emerging startups seeking the customers, infrastructure and real-world environments needed to prove that their products can work at scale.

Moroccan LegalTech startup Charikaty has closed a Pre-Seed funding round at a €3 million (MAD 32.6 million) valuation, bringing Gulf investors on board as the company expands from digital business incorporation into accounting, compliance and other services covering the wider company lifecycle.

The round includes Dubai-based Red Tape Ventures, Faris Al-Obaid, Vice President and General Manager of Mastercard Kuwait, and Faris Abdi, a Saudi professional footballer at Al-Ittihad, alongside other undisclosed investors. The company did not disclose the amount raised.

Founded by Amr Mouaqit, Co-Founder and CEO, and Driss Sijelmassi, Co-Founder and COO, Charikaty plans to use the new capital to launch two ventures, expand its accounting and compliance offering, and prepare the accounting business for expansion into Egypt and GCC markets.

The strategy represents a significant evolution for a startup that began by tackling one of the earliest administrative challenges entrepreneurs face: legally creating a company.

“Company creation gave us a very clear place to start, but it also gave us a front-row view of what entrepreneurs need next,” Mouaqit said. “The ambition now is larger than the incorporation itself. We want to build around the lifecycle of the company.”

From Digital Incorporation to a Broader Business Platform

Charikaty enables entrepreneurs to incorporate several company structures in Morocco entirely online, including SARL, SARL AU, SAS and foreign subsidiaries, using a legalized electronic signature and upfront fixed pricing.

According to the company, the filing process can be completed in as little as three days.

It has also developed a dedicated channel for Morocco’s diaspora, serving Moroccans across more than 100 countries and allowing entrepreneurs abroad to establish companies without travelling to Morocco, appointing a proxy or attending a consular appointment.

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Beyond incorporation, Charikaty already provides statutory modifications, domiciliation, accounting packages, trademark filing and company dissolution.

Its client portal allows entrepreneurs to track their files in real time and keep official documents in one place, while each case is assigned to a named jurist.

The company now wants to build additional products around businesses acquired at the incorporation stage, effectively turning company formation into the entry point for a longer-term relationship with entrepreneurs.

Charikaty Launches Webaty as First New Venture

One of the first products emerging from that strategy is Webaty, a website-development venture launched in September.

The idea was driven by a recurring need among newly established companies using Charikaty: once an entrepreneur creates a business, establishing a digital presence is frequently one of the next steps.

Rather than offering identical website-development packages across businesses, Webaty starts with the company’s profession and the commercial outcome its website needs to deliver.

The service draws on playbooks covering more than 16 industry verticals, including e-commerce, construction, consulting, restaurants and short-term rentals.

“A restaurant and a consulting firm can both ask for a website, but they are not asking for the same outcome,” Sijelmassi explained. “One may need reservations, the other qualified enquiries. That difference changes what you build.”

Webaty can deliver an initial website version within 72 hours once the required content has been provided.

Accounting Venture Targets Egypt and GCC

A second venture focused on accounting and compliance is expected to launch later in September and represents a more explicitly regional component of Charikaty’s strategy.

The company is initially developing the product around Morocco’s accounting and tax framework, including the country’s incoming electronic invoicing requirements.

Charikaty ultimately intends to take the accounting venture beyond Morocco into Egypt and the GCC, where digitalisation of tax administration and electronic invoicing are creating opportunities for software platforms capable of adapting to different national regulations.

The founders see Morocco as a proving ground for the model before entering additional MENA markets.

The strategy comes as Morocco itself moves further toward digital company formation. More than 50,300 companies have been created electronically, while electronic incorporation accounted for 44% of total company creations in 2026, according to figures cited from the country’s Ministry of Industry and Commerce.

Gulf Investors Back Charikaty’s Regional Ambitions

The composition of Charikaty’s Pre-Seed round also connects the startup with the markets it intends to enter.

Investors from the UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are participating as Charikaty prepares to move from a primarily Morocco-focused LegalTech platform toward a broader regional business-services model.

The startup’s thesis is that many entrepreneurs continue to face fragmented services after incorporation, from accounting and compliance to branding and digital operations.

By acquiring businesses at the moment they are created, Charikaty believes it has an opportunity to become the platform through which founders access several of those subsequent services.

That shifts the company’s long-term opportunity beyond simply digitising incorporation.

For Mouaqit and Sijelmassi, the next test is whether the technology-led model they developed for Moroccan company creation can be extended across the rest of a company’s lifecycle — and eventually replicated across Egypt and the wider Gulf region.

Saudi venture capital firm STV has secured an investment from global alternative asset manager Arcapita for its Emerging Tech & AI Fund, strengthening an institutional investor base that already includes Google, regional semi-sovereign entities and endowments.

The companies did not disclose the size of Arcapita’s commitment.

STV’s fund targets early-stage startups developing application-layer technology and artificial intelligence products. Its mandate focuses on helping portfolio companies expand across the Middle East and North Africa while supporting their entry into international markets.

The partnership could also connect emerging technology companies with established businesses across the STV and Arcapita networks, creating opportunities for commercial agreements, technology adoption and knowledge exchange.

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Institutional Capital Targets Applied AI

Arcapita’s participation reflects growing institutional interest in AI businesses that build commercial products and services on top of foundational models and computing infrastructure.

STV said the application layer attracted more than $19 billion in enterprise spending during 2025, while AI-native companies generated twice as much revenue as incumbent providers. These figures underpin the firm’s thesis that emerging technology companies can capture increasing corporate spending as businesses move from AI experimentation toward practical deployment.

The fund will invest at the earliest stages, giving STV exposure to companies before they establish mature products or distribution. This approach carries greater execution risk but offers the potential to support startups as they shape new technology categories.

Arcapita brings more than three decades of investment experience to the partnership. The firm focuses on private equity and real estate and has completed transactions with a combined value exceeding $32 billion.

Four AI-Native Startups Join the Portfolio

The Emerging Tech & AI Fund has invested in four startups so far: Sawt, Clarity, Signit and Stream. Each company addresses a different business function, ranging from customer service to legal technology and financial operations.

Sawt develops Arabic-native AI voice agents for customer service, targeting organisations that need automated conversations tailored to the language requirements of regional users.

Clarity offers an agentic AI platform that analyses customer service operations. Its software is designed to help businesses examine interactions and extract information that can improve service performance and decision-making.

Signit is a Saudi legal technology startup applying artificial intelligence to legal workflows. Stream, meanwhile, provides billing and payment infrastructure for Saudi businesses.

The portfolio illustrates STV’s preference for applied AI products that solve specific operational problems rather than companies building foundational models or hardware infrastructure.

Connecting Startups With Established Businesses

Beyond capital, the STV-Arcapita relationship is expected to give portfolio companies greater access to potential enterprise customers and commercial partners.

For early-stage AI startups, reaching established businesses can be as important as product development. Enterprise sales often involve lengthy procurement processes, technology reviews and integration requirements that young companies may struggle to navigate without institutional relationships.

STV intends to use the combined networks to help startups demonstrate their products in commercial environments, potentially accelerating adoption across regional industries. Established companies, in turn, could gain earlier access to emerging AI tools relevant to their operations.

The addition of Arcapita expands the fund’s institutional backing without changing its early-stage investment strategy. STV will continue targeting application-layer companies with the potential to grow across MENA and enter markets beyond the region.