Scalo Technologies to invest $100M in MENA startups, sets up HQ in Dubai

Tech venture company Scalo Technologies has established its headquarters in Dubai, in a strategic move to identify and guide startups with the potential to enter global markets.

Scalo intends to invest $100 million in promising startups over the next three to five years and sees Dubai as the perfect international hub to drive its plans in the tech and gaming sectors.

Set up in Singapore in 2020, Scalo chose to base its operations in Dubai in view of the emirate’s high level of business activity, growing economy, and strong government initiatives to attract entrepreneurs and professionals from across the globe.

“Dubai is at the heart of the MENA region, which is actively growing, and provides us with many outstanding investment opportunities,” said Abdumalik Mirakhmedov, Director and co-founder of Scalo Technologies.

“In particular, we want to capitalise on the chance to connect with global startups and also to meet UAE-based and MENA-based founders. This is where we need to be to communicate with our prospective partners as a global technology group focused on fast-growing sectors of the digital economy.”

Mirakhmedov is an entrepreneur and investor in advanced and industry-specific products across High-Performance Computing, SaaS and Al.

He has taken up residence in Dubai along with Scalo Technologies’ co-founder Rashit Makhat and the rest of the company’s management and operations team.

In frame: Abdumalik Mirakhmedov (right) and Rashit Makhat (left), Co-Founders of Scalo Technologies. Image courtesy of Scalo

“Our key idea is to help founders of startups with the potential to scale up their business to enter global markets, no matter the language or location of their potential customers,” said Makhat.

“We’re particularly interested in cloud-based AI products and gaming companies and are constantly searching for breakthrough ideas that can grow worldwide. At the same time, we are always exploring new opportunities in other fast-growing sectors. Markets displaying multiple growth potential over the next five to ten years are of particular interest to us.”

Scalo aims to help launch breakthrough technologies for the masses and wants to make access to best-in-class software and HPC facilities more affordable through the cloud.

Investments to date include Megarender.com, the online cloud render farm, and Voctiv, a deep tech company helping businesses worldwide to build fully autonomous, AI-powered contact centres. It uses virtual agents capable of keeping up sophisticated conversations and mimicking human emotions.

Scalo Technologies has a wide variety of prospective investments in the pipeline this year, including game developing and publishing companies, fintech apps, B2B tech and AI companies.

Having earmarked $100 million for investment in promising startups over the next three to five years, Scalo estimates that around 50% of this will be in MENA-based tech and AI companies.