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The US-based educational technology start-up Manara, which helps engineers from the Middle East and North Africa region get jobs at top tech companies such as Google, Meta and Amazon, raised $3 million in a pre-seed funding round.

The latest round was led by FinTech company Stripe with participation from Mudassir Sheikha, founder and chief executive of ride-hailing firm Careem; LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman; Paul Graham, founder of start-up accelerator Y-Combinator; and Eric Ries, a California-based entrepreneur and the author of Lean Start-up.

“We received more appetite from investors than we could accommodate, signalling an increasing interest from Silicon Valley in platforms that facilitate online and offline communities, and solutions to access highly skilled talent from emerging markets,” said Iliana Montauk, co-founder and chief executive of Manara.

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