Nawaf Hariri: The Founder Scaling Salla to $7B in Merchant Sales

Nawaf Hareeri, co-founder and CEO of Salla, is one of Saudi Arabia’s most influential digital entrepreneurs. Based in Makkah, he has emerged as a key figure in the Kingdom’s e-commerce transformation, enabling thousands of merchants to bring their businesses online with ease. His journey is not just about building a company. It is about reshaping the future of Saudi commerce.

In 2016, e-commerce in Saudi Arabia was still a fragmented landscape. Sellers relied heavily on Instagram chats to coordinate with buyers, and every sale required manual effort. Amid this friction, Nawaf Hareeri saw not just a problem, but a path to reshape commerce for an entire generation.

Early Footsteps & Entrepreneurial Spark

Hariri’s entrepreneurial drive surfaced early. Alongside co-founder Salman Butt, he would later build Salla into a national success story. Before that, Hareeri founded ventures like Masareef App and Web Fan Company, signaling his instinct to leverage technology for everyday challenges. Based in Makkah, he witnessed firsthand how local merchants struggled with outdated tools. This grounding in the real struggles of small business owners would later define his leadership style: building with empathy and solving for the underserved.

What Sparked Salla

The spark for Salla came from observing the chaos of online selling in the mid-2010s. At the time, Instagram dominated commerce, but it lacked structure. Sellers and buyers had to coordinate manually, making even one transaction a burden. Hareeri's solution was deceptively simple: build an app that gathered all the buyer’s details and sent them to the merchant in one step. It started as a basic tool, but quickly evolved into Salla, now Saudi Arabia’s largest SaaS e-commerce enablement platform.

Hareeri's belief was clear: real innovation comes from solving local pain points. “We are Saudis, and we know Saudis well,” he emphasized, grounding Salla in cultural fluency rather than imported models.

Strategic Execution & Growth

Convincing investors was not easy. One early meeting ended with a blunt dismissal: “Even if you combine all the online stores in Saudi, they won’t exceed 5,000.” Hareeri recalls feeling the sting of that rejection, but it became fuel rather than defeat. By 2018, Salla was powering thousands of merchants and processing billions of riyals.

Over time, he shifted focus from customer convenience to merchant empowerment. The launch of Salla 4.0 cut operational steps from seven clicks to two and integrated shipping, inventory, and payments. Hareeri's mantra of reinvention pushed the team to ask, “What if we rebuilt Salla from scratch?”—a bold move that carried risk but ultimately unlocked the platform’s next chapter.

Recognition & Global Relevance

In 2023, Hareeri guided Salla into the Saudi Unicorns Program, a national initiative that accelerates high-potential companies into global scale-ups. This recognition underscores both governme

nt confidence in Salla and Hareeri's role in positioning it as a flagship of Saudi innovation.

Strategic Momentum

Salla’s growth reflects the broader rise of Saudi tech entrepreneurship. In 2020, the company secured an $8.5 million Series A led by STV. By 2024, it had raised a $130 million pre-IPO round from Investcorp, Sanabil, and STV, cementing its place among the region’s most promising future listings.

Today, the platform supports more than 100,000 merchants and has processed over $7 billion in sales. With a workforce of 400+ engineers, designers, and researchers, Salla has matured into core infrastructure for Saudi commerce.

"This investment propels us forward in our ongoing mission to open opportunities and empower individuals, SMEs, and enterprises to start and expand their businesses both within and beyond Saudi Arabia." — Nawaf Hariri, CEO and co-founder of Salla

Expanding the Ecosystem

Beyond its core platform, Salla expanded into digital advertising through the acquisition of Sweply, a Saudi startup specializing in online ad solutions. Rebranded as Salla Ads, the new arm embeds AI-powered marketing tools directly into merchant dashboards. This move reflects Hariri’s vision of vertical integration: extending beyond store creation to cover the full value chain of commerce.

Strategic Partnerships & National Alignment

Under Hareeri’s leadership, Salla has forged key partnerships that broaden its ecosystem and deepen merchant value:

• Al Rajhi Bank: Integration with the Mokafaa loyalty program, enabling shoppers at over 60,000 Salla-powered stores to earn and redeem points.
• STC Bank: Collaboration to streamline digital payments across the platform.
• J&T Express: Cross-border logistics cooperation to enhance international fulfillment.
• Adjust: Analytics partnership to provide merchants with stronger campaign insights.
• Cloudflare: Long-term partnership to strengthen infrastructure security and resilience.

Together, these alliances reflect Hareeri’s strategy of scaling Salla not in isolation, but as part of a connected ecosystem that advances Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 digital ambitions.

Vision Forward

Nawaf Hareeri isn’t merely building a company, he is helping shape the future of Saudi entrepreneurship. As Vision 2030 drives digital transformation, Salla stands as a national enabler, giving merchants of all sizes the tools to compete regionally and globally. Hareeri's dream is bold but simple: for Salla to rival global platforms and for Saudi merchants to no longer feel disadvantaged on the world stage.

“We’re not missing anything.” Hareeri insists. Coming from a founder who has taken Salla from Instagram shops to a platform powering billions, it feels less like a claim and more like a statement of intent.

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