ⓘ Featured image: Thobi’s co-founders: Khalid Abanami (L) and Abdulmajeed Alresaini
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia-based Thobi, an e-commerce platform that sells customised thobes for men has reportedly raised SAR 2.5 million (around $650,000) in a seed funding round led by ABN Ventures, an investment arm of Abunayyan Holdings that has its subsidiaries spread across the MENA region.
The company was founded in 2018 by Khalid Abanami, CEO and Abdulmajeed Alresaini, COO, as the first ‘smart thobe tailor’ to offer fully-remote service to its customers.
Talking about the core cognition of Thobi, Abanami in a press statement said,
“With consumers increasingly in need of a value proposition driven by convenience, especially in a post-COVID-19 world, we at Thobi sought to develop a unique thobe tailoring business model with technology at its core. Through our application, we offer customers an easy and instant purchasing experience. They can select and customize their thobe of choice, and instantly measure themselves with a few clicks; all from the comfort of their own home,”
The company leverages its proprietary technology to analyze pictures and extract clothing measurements to enable the manufacturing and delivery of bespoke thobes. In the first half of 2020, Thobi was able to deliver over 1000 thobes to customers across 47 cities, towns, and villages in the Kingdom.
Talking about the technology side, Alresaini stated,
“Our proprietary technology is a result of more than 3 years of research and development, leveraging advanced image processing, and artificial intelligence methods to gain a high degree of measurement accuracy. It enables our customers to take their own measurements anytime and anywhere without the need to go to a tailor or have a tailor visit them. The technology is a key driver for our main goal, which is to provide a convenient and instant purchasing experience for tailored thobes.”
Speaking of the confidence in Thobi, Abdullah Almedbel, Head of Investments at ABN Ventures shared,
“Thobi, with its technology, will disrupt the traditional thobe tailoring business in the region. We see a huge opportunity for scale and growth in this segment.”
