MENA-Serving Job Platform Localized Raises $2.2M in Funding

The U.S.-based career tech platform, Localized, has received a $2.2 million cash injection in a seed round aimed to expand the company’s mission to connect top talents from emerging MENA markets with industry experts, as it seeks to make use of the growing global and highly-educated talent pool.

Currently, 150 million students complete a post-secondary education, a figure expected to boom up to 1 billion by 2050. Localized steps in with its efforts to facilitate the transition into the job market by increasing accessibility for young and educated talents to step into international companies.

With two thirds of current post-secondary graduates located in emerging markets, the career tech platform centres its operations within them, with offices in Ramallah, Cairo, Amman, and Lagos, as well as San Francisco, Prague, and Dubai. The company began by serving top universities and supporting talent hubs across the MENA region, and has grown to host students from over 100 countries.

Its particular focus on offering career services for university students has, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and its disruptions, come to take the shape of an online and contactless form of recruitment. School and university recruiters are able to take advantage of industry insights from top professionals sharing their languages and roots, without in-person career fairs.

Among the leading investors in the round was Next Wave Impact, where Heather Henyon is a member of the investment committee. Henyon hailed Localized’s efforts, saying “as companies look for diverse, world-class talent, Localized fills a critical need. We led this funding round after hearing from satisfied customers and seeing the traction firsthand over the last 2 years.”

The new funds take Localized’s total investments raised by the company to $3.6 million.