Led by Polish entrepreneur Iliana Montauk, Manara raises $3 million to expand talent pool in North Africa

Manara, a Middle East and North Africa-focused Edtech startup led by Polish tech entrepreneur Iliana Montauk, has raised $3 million in pre-seed funding from Silicon Valley investors as it seeks to launch world-class careers for top female software engineers in North Africa and other Middle Eastern countries.

The U.S.-based edtech startup, founded last year by Montauk as CEO and Laila Abudahi as CTO, was launched to help engineers from the Middle East and North Africa land jobs at leading tech firms such as Google, Meta and Amazon.

As Manara only charges its community members and hiring partners if a successful match is made, nearly 86 percent of the engineers from Manara’s last MENA program received job offers within five months of graduation, with more than half of those offers coming from Meta — Facebook’s parent company, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google.

Stripe, Irish-American financial services and software as a service company with offices in San Francisco, California, and Dublin, Ireland, led Manara’s recent $3-million pre-seed funding round.

Mudassir Sheikha, founder and CEO of the ride-hailing company Careem, LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman, and Eric Ries, a California-based entrepreneur and author of “”Lean Startup,” all contributed to the pre-seed funding.

Manara intends to use the new funds to expand its existing cohort-based solution from 60 engineers per year to 6,000, with a particular emphasis on North Africa.

The startup also revealed plans to launch a self-service product for interview practice, networking, and mentorship that will reach millions of software engineers.

Montauk commented on the funding round, stating: “We received more appetite from investors than we could accommodate, signaling an increasing interest from Silicon Valley in platforms that facilitate online and offline communities, and solutions to access highly skilled talent from emerging markets.”