Ruba, a Kuwait-based fintech startup, has raised funding in a pre-seed financing round

• ByStartupStory     |    October 26, 2022

Ruba, a Kuwait-based fintech startup with a mission to make education more accessible, has raised an undisclosed amount from a select group of strategic angel investors in an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round. Ruba, founded in 2021 by Ameen Nadoom, Fawaz Al-Rashdan, and Menawer Al-Azmi, allows parents to pay for their children’s school tuition fees in easy monthly instalments at no cost. With a goal of expanding across the MENA region, the startup collaborates with private nurseries, K-12 schools, universities, and other academic providers in Kuwait.

Ruba began as a smart directory to help parents make educated decisions about the best school for their child’s future, according to co-founder and CEO Ameen Nadoom. Observing market demands and feedback,Nadoom said, “We decided to shift our focus by offering [a] Shariah-compliant enroll-now-pay-later (ENPL) solution for private schools and nurseries in the region.” The new funds will be used to expand the team, launch the digital solution, and market it throughout the region. Aside from that, the team plans to include more universities as early as next year and expand to the KSA market in early 2023 in the coming months.

With backgrounds in management consulting, banking, telecommunications, and retail in the GCC and North America, the co-founders were eager to address the issues that parents face when paying expensive tuition fees in two or three instalments each school year, resulting in a cash flow issue and stress. Parents can easily request a breakdown of lump sums into affordable monthly instalments using the fully digital API-first platform, while educational institutions are free of reconciliation challenges and delays.

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