In Forbes, three Lebanese among the ‘Middle East’s Top 30 Fintech Companies’ shining stars

In Forbes, the Lebanese twist is present this time with three innovative Lebanese people among the shining stars of the magazine’s Middle East’s Top 30 Fintech Companies 2023.  

Mark Chahwan, Nadine Mezher, and Jad Sayegh, who all are originally from Lebanon, cofounded Sarwa, an investment platform, which according to Forbes, has raised $25 million in funding since its establishment in 2017.   

Sarwa is an investment and personal finance platform which provides "a one-stop shop for money management." With over 180,000 registered users, the platform’s annual trading volume grew to $550 million in 2022, more than 25 times compared to 2021.  

In this year’s list, Egypt is the most represented with eight entries, while Saudi Arabia has six companies, and the UAE and Kuwait have five each, with payment companies dominating.  

Sarwa, which means “wealth” in Arabic, employs around 50 people; according to the cofounders, the platform’s “users are spread across several different regions, with the top five being India, the UAE, the UK, the Arab world, and Europe,” Forbes stated.  

Their venture started when Mark Chahwan, born in Canada but raised in Lebanon, met Jad Sayegh in high school. Both began their careers in Canada, as Chahwan started at BLOMINVEST Bank, while Sayegh began as a software engineer.  

While Nadine Mezher completed her bachelor’s degree in business administration from the American University of Beirut (AUB) and moved to France to study fashion at Esmod Paris, in 2008, she moved to Dubai to work as a growth consultant.  

“While living in Canada, Chahwan and Sayegh regularly headed home for holidays to visit Lebanon and Dubai. They knew Mezher through her sibling, who they’d met at school, and as the three hung out, they came up with an idea,” said the magazine.  

Interested in economic stability, the cofounders decided to establish their startup in the UAE, and in 2017, while Sarwa was still an idea, the entrepreneurs were accepted in the Fintech accelerator program at Dubai’s DIFC FinTech Hive, and “they obtained a regulatory license, funding themselves by raising venture capital through a seed round from angel investors and Shorooq Partners.”  

In May 2022, Sarwa also introduced Sarwa Crypto. “We wanted to give the option for clients to make their own selective bets in sectors and asset classes that they believe in, and crypto was definitely one of them, and it still is,” said Sayegh.  

The cofounders also expressed that they are working on launching new products and features in 2024.