We are leading a $3.0m (SAR 11.25m) investment round in Wajeez, the leading app-based platform that offers summaries of top global and local non-fiction books in Arabic. Through Wajeez’s app, anyone can read or listen to condensed versions of global non-fiction books in Arabic, with the company’s current library consisting of 3,500+ audio and text summaries.
Despite there being over 400 million Arabic speakers worldwide, there is deceptively little Arabic content available online – only 3% of internet content is in Arabic in comparison to MENA users being 7% of the world’s internet users. More importantly, high-quality short-form content and summaries are more scarce, highlighting a huge gap between demand for, and supply of Arabic quality content.
This is where Wajeez fits in perfectly. Through the company’s library of 3,500+ text and audio summaries, users have quick access to the key insights of the most popular and award-winning non-fiction books. The published summaries, all in Arabic, are based on a carefully curated selection of the most popular non-fiction books, which undergo a rigorous vetting and quality control process before being published onto the platform.
The demand for such a platform is evident by Wajeez’s growth. Since its official launch in December 2020, the company reached an audience of 800,000 users in just 7 months. This has been the result of the hard work of Mohammad Zatara and Rami Abu Jbari, who bring a wide range of content experience to the table as the previous CEO of Faylasof and executive at Skynews and Al Shariq-Bloomberg, respectively.
The things we love about this team is their ambition and execution capabilities. While their current app is growing like wildfire, they are already thinking two steps ahead by expanding into shortened podcasts (“WajeezCast”) and B2B partnerships. Moreover, the company is looking to expand into other languages such as Turkish and Urdu, allowing people in neighboring countries to obtain the benefits of short-form content.
We are happy to partner with a fast-growing startup like Wajeez, which marks our first investment in the Levant. With the largest library of non-fiction summaries in the region, the company has created a flywheel that only gets stronger with more time, content, and listeners. We believe this to be a significant whitespace in the region, and are excited to partner with Mohammad and Rami on their journey, together with our co-investors Shorooq Partners, Mawdoo3, and Wise Ventures. You can download the Wajeez app for free here.
Sources:
Al Arabiya
Statista