Taketful AI attracts Hatem Douidar investment ahead of the upcoming Series A round
Egyptian platform Taketful AI, which manages customer experience with agency AI, announced the addition of Hatem Douidar, former CEO of E& Group, to its investors through a direct investment in an extended pre-Series A round. The first round was announced in February 2026 with joint leadership from Foras AI and Empire, and the new extension comes as the company prepares to launch its next-generation agency technology and aims for a Series A round in 2027.
From the company to the investor:Douidar is not a passing name in the regional tech scene. He has spent a quarter-century leading telecom companies that serve millions of customers across the Middle East and Africa, including 16 years at Vodafone, most recently as CEO of Vodafone Egypt, before heading E& from 2020 until March 2026. His decision to invest directly in an Egyptian startup specializing in agency AI-driven customer experience signals that major regional firms are no longer merely observing; they are now betting on the infrastructure that will enable organisations to adopt intelligent agents safely and at scale.
The technology he backed:Taketful AI, founded by Mohamed Al-Masri and Mohamed Hassan in 2016, has built a unified platform that combines interaction, coordination, governance, analytics, advanced automation and agency AI. The platform is already operating in live production environments for clients such as the Al-Arabi Group, Raneen, To-Be, Lucky One, Irada for Finance and Simplex. Since January 2025, the company has recorded a 11.7-fold increase in annual recurring revenue and a 32-fold rise in monthly conversations processed through the platform. The new technology that the company promises to unveil in the coming months aims to shrink customer-experience process development cycles from months to hours, while keeping human oversight and approval at every step.
Regional angle:The investment reflects a shift in the region’s tech-funding dynamics. Douidar, with his experience building and operating large telecom networks, sees Taketful AI as the team capable of “setting the industrial standard, regionally and globally” for agency-based customer-experience solutions. Mohamed Al-Masri, co-founder and CEO, described the support as arriving “at a pivotal moment” in defining a new era for customer experience. For the Egyptian and Arab markets, the message is clear: agency AI infrastructure is no longer merely imported, but is being built locally, with capital and expertise that understand Arab organisations’ requirements regarding language, compliance and operational nature.
What this means for you:If you manage customer operations in a regional organisation, the reference here is not to a new chat tool but to a coordination layer that enables building and modifying a complete workflow and agency within hours instead of months. The entry of an investor with Douidar’s weight shortens the trust path that tech departments need to adopt these technologies in real-world production environments. The next round in 2027 will reveal whether this early bet translates into an actual regional standard.