Online gifts platform Joi Gifts has raised $2.5 million in Series A funding lead by investors in Dubai and Saudi Arabia. The company said the fund will be used for international expansion.

The funding round was led by Knuru Capital and it was joined by Dubai-based investor MENA Moonshots and Wa’ed, the entrepreneurship arm of Aramco. Knuru Capital is a Dubai-based venture capital firm that specialises in fintech and consumer marketplaces.

Joi Gifts is a product of Enhance Ventures, a venture capital studio that builds online marketplaces across the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and Turkey. Both companies have a dual-HQ set up based in Dubai and Riyadh. 

The company announced its eighth country for expansion earlier this year and said it had seen a five-fold increase in sales.

Rami Kahale, CEO of Joi Gifts, said the online marketplace would use the funding to fuel short-term growth through awareness campaigns, customer acquisition, product development and further regional expansion.

Countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE in the GCC have the highest average spend on gifts globally, according to Enhance Ventures, which values the MENA region’s gifting industry at $28 billion and growing more than 30 percent each year.

The company is the first online gifts platform to employ innovations such as augmented reality, it said.

“We are thrilled with this investment, which enables Joi Gifts to further enhance and improve what is already the MENA region’s leading online one-stop shop for gifts,” Kahale said.

“We are passionate about providing the best offering for customers in every market we operate in, and this new vote of confidence from our investors gives us the resources to deliver on our quality commitment.”

(Reporting by Imogen Lillywhite; editing by Seban Scaria)

Imogen.lillywhite@refinitiv.com

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