Jordan's EdTech Abwaab raises $20M in Series A
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The Jordan-based EdTech and online learning platform Abwaab has successfully raised $20M in its latest funding round. The Series A funding round was led by existing investor BECO Capital (UAE) and joined by 4DX Ventures (USA), GSV Ventures (USA), Watar Partners (KSA) and others.
Founded in late 2019, by Hamdi Tabbaa, Sabri Hakim, and Hussein AlSarabi, Abwaab positions its platform at secondary school students, offering content tailored to local curricula to fill the gaps in educational resources available online. Through Web and native apps, students participate in lessons, get feedback, and join discussion boards making alternative education highly accessible while tackling the region’s high dependence on offline tutoring.
Given the remote and hybrid lifestyles adopted globally due to the pandemic, EdTech ecosystems in Emerging Venture Markets have observed great investor traction in 2020, where 31 deals closed raised more than $40M for EdTech startups in MENA last year. As investor urges slow down, MENA-based EdTech startups raised 39% fewer deals and observed a 38% drop in capital deployed in 2021 YTD. Notably, however, major rounds in MENA-based EdTech 2021 were recorded by startups like UAE-based- almentor.net, KSA-based Jeel Platform, as well as Jordan-based Edunation and Abwaab.
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Since its launch, the Jordan-based EdTech has expanded from Jordan into Egypt and Pakistan, and following a $5M seed round in March of this year, this investment puts Abwaab as one of the most-funded regional EdTech startups across MENAP, a region that encompasses 160 million students. Abwaab has experienced strong growth during the pandemic-halted lockdown where children were unable to attend normal schooling. Hamdi Tabbaa, Abwaab’s Co-founder & CEO highlighted “Our mission since inception has been to make learning more accessible, affordable, and fun, by building a comprehensive ecosystem that changes the way students learn, while also equipping them with the tools needed to get ahead in life.” Peter Orth, Managing Partner at 4DX Ventures added “We believe very much in Abwaab’s mission to make high quality, outcome-driven education more affordable and accessible, and we believe that they are poised to become dominant in the MENAP region.”
In Jordan, where it has an active freemium subscription model, students are paying a one-off subscription to unlock access to the platform for the whole academic year. Abwaab stated that it has grown by 10x in the number of active users throughout the 2020/21 academic year. With the acquisition of Pakistani EdTech startup Edmatrix, Abwaab is competing on a regional level offering micro-lessons that match every country’s national curriculum in bite-sized content, test preps, and assessment, and extremely affordable annual subscriptions. The Jordan-based EdTech plans on channeling its newly acquired funds to continue its expansion into new markets. BECO Capital’s Abdulaziz Shikh Al Sagha concluded “Abwaab is on a clear path to establishing themselves as market leaders within the region and we are proud to have had the chance to further deepen our partnership with Hamdi, Sabri, Hussein, and the whole Abwaab team.”
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