• Egypt-based AI recruitment company Talents Arena, has raised a $750,000 pre-Seed funding round from UI Investments, alongside several Saudi and regional angel investors.
• Founded in 2019 by Aya Elgebeely, Talents Arena uses an AI-powered hiring engine to help organisations hire talent by fully automating the recruitment life cycle.
• The Flat6Labs portfolio company will use the new funds to fuel its expansion plans into Saudi Arabia and the GCC. 

Press release:

AI recruitment company, Talents Arena, announced closing $750,000 in pre-seed funding from UI Investments, alongside several prominent Saudi and regional angel investors. This funding round comes as the company is rapidly becoming a pioneering force in the AI recruitment industry; playing a critical role in bridging the unemployment gap in the Middle East and Africa region. 

Besides being a Flat6Labs portfolio company, Talents Arena is also an alumnus company of Plug and Play renowned startup accelerator program. The company's success in securing this pre-seed funding demonstrates strong investor confidence in the significant market opportunity in the Middle East.

Talents Arena has successfully made more than 180,000 job matches and placed thousands of candidates in suitable tech jobs, using its unique talent mining engine and automation features. The new funds will be channelled towards Talents Arena’s expansion plans into Saudi Arabia and the GCC. 

“Our talent mining engine leverages advanced algorithms and machine learning models that draw upon hundreds of thousands of human decisions to find hidden gems in the talent market and match them with suitable vacancies. This, in return, automates and streamlines the hiring process for both employers and job seekers,” said Aya Elgebeely, Founder and CEO of Talents Arena.

According to the International Labour Organisation’s World Employment and Social Outlook 2020 Report, there are 6 Million unfulfilled jobs in the Middle East and Africa region. IT recruiters and HR professionals are struggling to find the best match for their openings due to the long hiring process, rapid tech innovations, and fierce competition for high-calibre technology candidates.  

Talents Arena's AI engine aims to disrupt traditional hiring practices by significantly reducing time-to-hire, improving job matchmaking, and enabling startups, corporates and governments to monitor and optimise their hiring process and meet hiring KPIs. By bringing technological advancement to recruitment, the company is set to become the go-to recruitment solution for companies in the Middle Eastern market and beyond.

"This funding milestone enables us to accelerate the development of our AI hiring engine and expand our footprint in the Saudi market that already accounts for 25% of our client base,” Elgebeely added. “We are excited to bring our cutting-edge technology to businesses across industries in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, helping hiring managers and recruiters find talents faster with higher accuracy and at a better economical value.

Talents Arena was founded in 2019 by Aya Elgebeely, an Egyptian entrepreneur and tech woman with extensive experience in tech and product delivery. She has a proven track record of leading technology teams and contributing to many successful projects. She was recognised as an IBM Inventor and a certified Cloud Engineer with four published tech patents and numerous publications and papers in software project management.