Jordanian edtech Abwaab raises $5.1 million seed to expand across the region

Amman-based edtech Abwaab has raised $5.1 million in a seed round, it announced today. The investment came from 4DX Ventures, Beco Capital, EQ2 Ventures, Foundation Ventures, GSV Ventures, and Spartech Ventures. It comes a year after Abwaab raised $2.4 million in what was the region’s largest pre-seed round of the time.

Founded in 2019 by former Uber, Careem, and Mawdoo3 executives, Abwaab’s online platform enables secondary school students in the Middle East & North Africa to learn different subjects at their own pace with the help of engaging video lessons and interacting with tutors, test themselves using tests and quizzes, and track their performance using different tools. The platform currently has a library of over 50 thousand video lessons and questions all of which have been produced in-house. It uses a freemium subscription model, offering some of its content for free to students and charging for full access.

Abwaab in a statement said that it is being used by hundreds of thousands of unique students with double-digit Week-over-Week growth in lessons watched and questions solved on its platform in the last few months. Started in Jordan, Abwaab, according to its website, is now serving students in Egypt, Saudi, and Palestine as well.

The startup will be using the funds to further accelerate its expansion across the region. In many of its new markets, Abwaab will be going up against Saudi’s Noon Academy that has raised over $20 million to date.

Hamdi Tabbaa, the co-founder & CEO of Abwaab added, “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 riper for education disruption than ours, and the entire Abwaab team has set sail to take this challenge head-on.”

Covid-19 has accelerated edtech in different parts of the world and the Middle East is no different. Abwaab (and Mawdoo3) last year had helped the Jordanian government launch an online education platform to teach over 1 million school-going students in Jordan as the schools were closed due to the pandemic.

Deborah Quazzo, Managing Partner at GSV Ventures 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.”

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 Capital 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.”