Amman, Jordan-based edtech startup Abwaab, on Monday, announced that the company has raised $5.1 million in its latest seed funding round that saw participation from 4DX Ventures, BECO Capital, EQ2 Ventures, Foundation Ventures, GSV Ventures, and Spartech Ventures.
Abwaab is planning to deploy the fresh capital towards regional expansion, and kicking off with Egypt that encompasses around 21 million students.
Founded in 2019, by Hamdi Tabbaa and Hussein Alsarabi, Abwaab is an online learning platform that allows secondary school students in MENA to learn at their own pace, test themselves and get ahead with our expert tutors anytime and anywhere. By offering concept-based video lessons, visualized learning journeys, continuous assessment, and performance-tracking features, we are changing the way students learn outside the classroom.
The company in March last year, raised its pre-seed funding round of $2.4 million, led by Adam Tech Ventures with participation from Endure Capital, Equitrust, Innovative Startups SMEs Fund (ISSF – a World Bank-backed fund), a London-based investment fund, a number of former and current executives from Uber and Netflix, and more.
The company claims that it has produced over 50,000 video lessons and questions and currently serves hundreds of thousands of unique students. To support its plans for scalability, tech development has also been in high gear and numerous features have been built that revolutionize the way students assess their knowledge and track their progress throughout their journey.
With regards to student engagement, Abwaab reports double-digit growth WoW (Week-Over-Week) in lessons watched and questions solved on its platform. This is proving to reflect positively in student performance at school.
Speaking of the investment, Deborah Quazzo, Managing Partner at GSV Ventures, in a statement said,
“GSV is proud to make Abwaab our first investment in the MENA region. To us, Abwaab represents the opportunity for a deeply talented team of entrepreneurs to dramatically increase access to high-quality education first in Jordan and then in MENA more broadly,”
Notably, GSV is one of the early VCs to invest in both Masterclass (US) and Coursera (US)
Abdulaziz Shikh Al Sagha, Venture Partner at BECO Capital, said,
“Abwaab is tackling a regional whitespace through a deeply thought-out platform focused on delivering quality educational content to students across the Arab world. BECO was captivated by how mission-driven and execution-focused the founding team are, particularly having achieved a lot with very little demonstrating how resourceful and efficient the team is whilst producing extremely high-quality work. We are proud to be a part of their journey in establishing themselves as the de-facto market leaders in the space,”
Hamdi Tabbaa, Co-founder & CEO, Abwaab, said,
“Our region is home to over 100 million students. To unleash their full potential, we are empowering the upcoming generation with education. There is no region more ripe for education disruption than ours, and the entire Abwaab team has set sail to take this challenge head on,”
