First Bangladeshi company enters Saudi startup ecosystem through $110m merger

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Updated 10 April 2025
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First Bangladeshi company enters Saudi startup ecosystem through $110m merger

  • Backed by Saudi, US investment, ShopUp merges with Sary to form SILQ
  • Merger prompts Bangladesh’s central bank to establish special startup fund

DHAKA: Bangladesh’s largest B2B commerce platform ShopUp has entered Saudi Arabia’s startup ecosystem through a merger with Riyadh-based services and marketplace platform Sary, backed by US and Saudi investors.

Both ShopUp and Sary help small businesses buy products in bulk from wholesalers or manufacturers with digital ordering platforms, delivery and financial services.

Together they have formed SILQ Group, backed by a $110 million funding led by Sanabil Investments — a company owned by the Saudi Public Investment Fund and Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures.

The companies said in their merger announcement on Wednesday that they are “set to become one of the world’s largest trade corridors. It is projected to reach $682 billion.”

“We’re building infrastructure that helps small businesses move goods, access financing, and grow. A key part of this is the launch of SILQ Financial, our dedicated financing arm focused on driving innovation in SME funding. It allows us to offer embedded financial products — natively within our platforms,” ShopUp’s CEO Afeef Zaman told Arab News.

“There’s a $682 billion trade opportunity emerging right here between the Gulf and Emerging Asia. We want to go deep and serve this corridor well ... We’re laying the foundation to expand beyond this corridor in the long term.”

ShopUp was founded by Zaman, Ataur Rahim Chowdhury, and Navaneetha Krishnan J. in 2017, while Sary was founded in 2018 by Mohammed Aldossary and Khaled Alsiari.

Zaman will serve as the CEO of SILQ Group and Aldossary as CEO of SILQ Financial.

ShopUp and Sary have served more than 600,000 retailers, hotels, restaurants, cafes, and wholesalers, to date. The combined network has facilitated over $5 billion in transactions and disbursed more than $750 million in embedded financing.

Zaman believes that more Bangladeshi startups will follow in ShopUp’s footsteps, as the Saudi market offers not only scale, capital, and sophistication, but also a cultural overlap, a strong consumer base — including 3 million Bangladeshi expats — “and a hunger for innovation” across retail, finance, and logistics.

“Bangladeshi startups have a lot to offer in terms of resilience and operating in high-density, resource-constrained environments. In return, Saudi Arabia offers access to institutional partnerships, forward-thinking regulation, and the ability to test and scale products that can work globally,” he said.

“Saudi Arabia is writing one of the most exciting startup stories in the world right now. The pace of change, the vision, and the level of institutional support — especially for high-impact sectors like fintech, logistics, and B2B — make it one of the most promising markets for founders.”

The Bangladeshi government welcomed ShopUp’s merger as “a defining moment” in its digital journey and “one of the most significant global expansion milestones ever achieved by a startup from Bangladesh.”

It also announced the establishment of a dedicated fund to provide capital support to startup companies.

“This moment is more than a funding headline — it’s a clear signal that Bangladeshi startups are ready for the world stage,” the government’s press wing said in a statement.

“To accelerate this momentum, Bangladesh Bank has committed to a landmark startup funding initiative: TK 800 crore (about $66 million) in equity and TK 400 crore (about $33 million) in debt. This fund will serve as a catalytic boost for early and growth-stage startups, empowering local founders to innovate, scale, and compete globally.”


’I have to pray’: fear, danger for paramedics in South Africa’s crime hotspots

Updated 8 sec ago
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’I have to pray’: fear, danger for paramedics in South Africa’s crime hotspots

  • The call came in just after 7:00 p.m. as the paramedics began the night shift: a man had been stabbed in the head with a glass bottle and was bleeding heavily
CAPE TOWN: The call came in just after 7:00 p.m. as the paramedics began the night shift: a man had been stabbed in the head with a glass bottle and was bleeding heavily.
The medical crew and their ambulance from Cape Town’s Emergency Medical Services (EMS) were only minutes away. But they could not respond until they had an armed police escort.
The Cape Flats, low-lying townships outside Cape Town, are hotspots for murder and gang violence in a country already plagued by one of the highest crime rates in the world.
The sprawling area of Philippi, where the wounded man lay bleeding in a shack, is among the most dangerous.
It is one of nine Red Zones in Cape Town where the EMS refuses to allow its medical crews to move without security cover.
“If it was up to me, I would go straight there,” said paramedic Mawethu Ntintini, 52, pacing the sidewalk outside the Philippi police station in his green reflective uniform.
“But we have to go through the police.”
Waiting inside the ambulance was Ntintini’s partner, Ntombikayisi Joko, who has narrowly escaped ambush while on duty and was robbed in 2021 while waiting for directions to a call-out.
“Every time I’m going out, I have to pray,” the 42-year-old mother told AFP.
“If we were going there by ourselves, we would be robbed,” Ntintini admitted.
They waited another 30 minutes before a police patrol car emerged to escort the ambulance 10 minutes down the road to a small shack of corrugated iron.

Anguished family members crowded at the wounded man’s bed were relieved to see the paramedics. “Sometimes we have to wait until the morning just because we live in a wrong place,” one said.
As the team worked, the police car’s flashing lights cast a blue glow on the dark street.
The man’s injuries, a deep cut to the arm and a bump on the head, were less severe than feared. Loaded into the ambulance, he arrived at the hospital at 8:45 pm, almost two hours after the call for help.
Joko recalled a time the police, overstretched and overburdened, could only free up an escort more than an hour after an emergency was issued for a woman in labor.
It was too late.
“It was a baby boy, he was so cute. The umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck,” she said.
“I was crying, because I knew that if I was there before, I would have helped that baby.”
Four of South Africa’s top five homicide hotspots last year were in the Cape Flats, according to police figures.
The Western Cape — one of nine provinces — recorded more than 12 people murdered every day, with the national average hovering around 75 a day.
The EMS demanded security escorts in 2015 when there was more than one assault a week on paramedics operating in the Cape Flats.
Incidents peaked in 2017 when nearly 90 attacks were recorded, ranging from verbal abuse and theft to hijackings and stabbings. In 2023, the latest available figure, there were 44 incidents.

Ambulance crews are soft targets for criminals looking to steal phones, money or medical equipment, said Pastor Craven Engel, who runs a gang violence prevention organization called Ceasefire.
He linked the violence to hardships imposed under apartheid, the previous government that espoused racial segregation and forced non-whites into bleak areas like Philippi, 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the city center.
“It started with the urban displacement, uprooting people, putting them into areas where there’s no economic development, no recreation, no sustainable livelihood,” Engel said.
With high unemployment and rampant poverty, “the resources are so depleted that people are now targeting the good guys,” he told AFP at his offices in Hanover Park, another Red Zone.
Medical crews working to save lives sometimes know the criminals who threaten them and might also, one day, need their assistance, said 32-year-old paramedic Inathi Jacob.
“You get angry,” she said. “But we don’t let them get us to the core. There are a lot of people who really need the services of EMS.”
Ntintini and Joko had just dropped the bleeding man at a hospital when the second “priority one” call of their night shift came in: an elderly man, recently recovered from a stroke, was unresponsive.
Driving to his house would take only five minutes but the ambulance could only leave 40 minutes later, sirens blaring as a police car escorted them down narrow, dark alleyways.

France ‘strongly’ condemns Israel’s Gaza conquest plan

Updated 4 min 54 sec ago
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France ‘strongly’ condemns Israel’s Gaza conquest plan

  • France’s foreign minister said on Tuesday that Paris “very strongly” condemns Israel’s new military campaign in the Gaza Strip

PARIS: France’s foreign minister said on Tuesday that Paris “very strongly” condemns Israel’s new military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
“It’s unacceptable,” Jean-Noel Barrot said in a radio interview, saying the Israeli government was “in violation of humanitarian law,” after its security cabinet approved a plan that an Israeli official said will entail “the conquest of the Gaza Strip and the holding of the territories.


Bangladesh’s ex-premier Khaleda Zia returns, adding pressure for elections

Updated 54 min 59 sec ago
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Bangladesh’s ex-premier Khaleda Zia returns, adding pressure for elections

  • Zia has been pressuring Bangladesh’s interim government to hold national election in December this year
  • Her physical presence in country has huge symbolic value for her party as ex-PM Hasina remains in exile

DHAKA, Bangladesh: Bangladesh’s ailing former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia returned to the country from London on Tuesday morning after four months of medical treatment, adding to pressure for its interim leaders to hold elections.

The South Asian country has been under a government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus since former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was ousted in a students-led mass uprising in August last year.

Zia, Hasina’s archrival, and her Bangladesh Nationalist Party have been pushing Yunus’ government to hold a national election in December to return the country to democratic rule.

Many welcomed Hasina’s overthrow as a chance to return to democratic elections, but suspicion and uncertainty have surfaced in recent months about the new government’s commitment to hold elections soon. It has said the next election will be held in either December or by June next year, depending on the extent of reforms in various sectors
Crowds gathered outside Dhaka’s main airport to welcome Zia.

Accompanied by her two daughters-in-law, Zia arrived on a special air ambulance arranged by Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who also arranged her transport to London in January. Zia suffers from various serious health conditions and she has not attended any public gatherings for many years. Her elder son, Tarique Rahman, leads the party as acting chief from exile in London.

Zia’s physical presence in the country has huge symbolic value for her party while Hasina is in exile in India.

Zia and Hasina have alternately ruled the country as prime ministers since 1991 when the country returned to a democracy after the ouster of authoritarian President H.M. Ershad.

Zia served the country as prime minister three times, twice for full five-year terms and once for just a few months.

Zia is the widow of former military chief-turned-president Ziaur Rahman, who was assassinated in 1981. Hasina is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who led Bangladesh’s independence struggle against Pakistan in 1971.


Trump official says Harvard banned from federal grants

Updated 14 min 46 sec ago
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Trump official says Harvard banned from federal grants

  • Harvard has drawn Trump’s ire by refusing to comply with his demands that it accept government oversight of its admissions, hiring practices and political slant.

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s education secretary said Monday that Harvard will no longer receive federal grants, escalating an ongoing battle with the prestigious university as it challenges the funding cuts in court.

The Trump administration has for weeks locked horns with Harvard and other higher education institutions over claims they tolerate anti-Semitism on their campuses — threatening their budgets, tax-exempt status and enrollment of foreign students.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon, in a letter sent to Harvard’s president and posted online, said that the university “should no longer seek GRANTS from the federal government, since none will be provided.”

She alleged that Harvard has “failed to abide by its legal obligations, its ethical and fiduciary duties, its transparency responsibilities, and any semblance of academic rigor.”

Harvard — routinely ranked among the world’s top universities — has drawn Trump’s ire by refusing to comply with his demands that it accept government oversight of its admissions, hiring practices and political slant.

That prompted the Trump administration to in mid-April freeze $2.2 billion in federal funding, with a total of $9 billion under review.

McMahon, a former wrestling executive, said that her letter “marks the end of new grants for the University.”

Harvard is the wealthiest US university with an endowment valued at $53.2 billion in 2024.

The latest move comes as Trump and his White House crack down on US universities on several fronts, justified as a reaction to what they say is uncontrolled anti-Semitism and a need to reverse diversity programs aimed at addressing historical oppression of minorities.

The administration has threatened funding freezes and other punishments, prompting concerns over declining academic freedom.

It has also moved to revoke visas and deport foreign students involved in the protests, accusing them of supporting Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose October 7, 2023 attack on Israel provoked the war.

Trump’s claims about diversity tap into long-standing conservative complaints that US university campuses are too liberal, shutting out right-wing voices and favoring minorities.


Ukraine’s drone attack on Moscow forces airports’ closure, officials say

Updated 06 May 2025
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Ukraine’s drone attack on Moscow forces airports’ closure, officials say

Russian air defense units destroyed a swarm of Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow for the second night in a row, prompting the closure of the capital’s airports, Russian officials said early on Tuesday.
Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that at least 19 Ukrainian drones were destroyed on their approach to Moscow “from different directions.”
“At the sites where fragments fell, there was no destruction or casualties,” Sobyanin wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “Specialists from the emergency services are working at the sites where the incidents occurred.”
Some of the debris had landed on one of the key highways leading into the city, he said.
Russia’s aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia said on Telegram it had halted flights at all four airports that serve Moscow. Airports in a number of regional cities were also closed.
On Tuesday, Russia’s air defense units destroyed four Ukrainian drones on their approach to Moscow, with no damage or injuries reported.
The war began more than three years ago when Russia invaded Ukraine, a move Moscow described as a special military operation. Since then, Kyiv has launched several drone attacks on Moscow. Its biggest attack in March killed three people.
There was no immediate comment from Kyiv about the latest drone attack. Ukraine says its drone attacks are aimed at destroying infrastructure key to Moscow’s overall war efforts and are in response to Russia’s continued assault on Ukrainian territory, including residential areas and energy infrastructure.