Jordan-based Whyise, an AI-powered impact analytics startup on 19 Aug raised seed investment from Ahli Fintech, a financial technology, innovation accelerator and a fully-owned subsidiary of Jordan Ahli Bank. Whyise was selected for the 6-month Ahli Fintech Seed Accelerator program in October 2019.
Co-founded by Reem Khouri and Ayad Taher in 2018, Whyise was recognised by the World Economic Forum in 2019 among the 100 Arab start-ups shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The company is mission is to provide organizations with the insights they need for impactful decision making. Their goal is to facilitate the data gathering and measurement process to enable higher transparency on the use of resources, compliance with governance standards and data analytics for insights and higher financial, economic, social and environmental return on investment. Their impact-analytics software has been developed by a team of local programmers in Amman, Jordan. The advanced technologies integrated into the solution enable it to provide superior real-time insight and their plans include leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence to demonstrate the correlations between sustainable business practices and robust financial returns.
The solution enables organizations to aggregate their data in real time, analyze it, align with international standards and benchmarks for evidence-based decision making. This capability enables a 360o view of the organization by restructuring its data for actionable intelligence. By extracting invaluable insight about the business and its impact, the solution enables significantly more effective and socially, economically, and environmentally impactful business decisions.
Organisations can benchmark themselves across a number of international indicators and standards across a number of industries and topics and the platform includes a library of over 2,000 indicators. The library includes standards such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) which covers economic, environmental and social standards, the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals (SDG) to track contributions towards universal development goals, and the International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) Environment, Social and Governance Standards (ESG) among others.
Since April 2020, Ahli Fintech has invested $200,000 in Whyise, and the same amount matched by the Innovative Startups and SMEs Fund (ISSF). Throughout the program, Whyise was able to validate their business model and demonstrate traction and growth in revenues, clients, content on its platform and exported its services outside of Jordan.
The startup has raised a total of $675,000, with other participating investors including Wamda Capital, Beyond Capital and angel investors Najla Baeshen and Abdul Majeed Shoman.
Speaking of their confidence and offering of Whyise, Rami Al Karmi, the CEO of Ahli Fintech in a statement said,
“Whyise, brings the power of AI and machine learning at the disposal of organization interested in measuring their impact on stakeholders and analyzing their data for evidence-based decision making. That, along with the amazing team, made the decision to invest in Whyise and accelerate its growth one that is aligned with our investment thesis, where we are focused on establishing Jordan as a regional hub for globally relevant fintech innovations.”
Commenting on the investment, Laith Al-Qassem, CEO of ISSF quoted,
“We at ISSF believe in adopting a data-driven approach to promote and strengthen Jordan’s entrepreneurship ecosystem. Whyise is a solution that is very relevant to the future of our economy and the global economy, post-covid-19, where sustainability is at its epicentre. When we build sustainable businesses, we are building resilient economies.”
Speaking of the funding for Whyise, Reem Khouri, Co-founder & CEO of Whyise, shared that both Ahli Fintech and ISSF are its supportive shareholders – offering the ability for Whyise to continually grow its amazing team to enable organizations to exponentially multiply their impact through data.
