Press Release.
Abjjad, the Jordanian Arabic library that provides unlimited access to thousands of Arabic books and novels, has raised a $1M Series A funding round through Rimal Capital, JordInvest and ISSF.
The Abjjad platform offers users unlimited access to 6000+ Arabic ebooks and novels, where they can rate, review, and add books to reading shelves, follow writers, and stay up-to-date with their latest work, amongst other features. Abjjad’s current offering is $5.99/month and currently has 1.5M registered readers and writers.
Founded by Eman Hylooz who has prior experience in the IT, digital marketing, and market research field, Ajjbad specializes in helping lost readers get convenient and affordable access to books, unrecognized authors to reach publicity, and publishers who are under the risk of extinction to become scalable and up to date with the new technology trends. Eman created Abjjad to help tackle this issue of linking readers to books and publishing houses, and create a social reading platform for readers, writers, and publishers.
The startup who is an Oasis 500 portfolio company, strives to meet the needs and tastes of all Arab readers, working continuously on adding more books of different genres from stories and novels, to biographies and self-help books. While only 3% of internet content is Arabic, Arabic speaking users on the internet are the 4th largest in the world. With 180M users and 3 out of 4 being frequent book readers, they are aiming for the platform to reach 20 million Arabic-speaking users.
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They work with leading Arab publishing houses and writers to digitize their books and enable them to be published on the platform, driving new revenue streams and increasing their readers’ base. Abjjad believes that digital publishing for Arabic books is lagging behind the rest of the world, and it has become their mission to solve this, alongside switching the Arabic world from piracy and PDFs to copyrighted versions with good user experience.
Eman Hylooz, Founder and CEO of Abjjad commented, “We at Abjjad, consider ourselves lucky to have onboard strategic investors that will take the company to the next level, we are very excited about the next stage and we already are witnessing at the very moment the growth within our team, our users, our publishers, and our beloved writers.”
Laith Al Qasem, CEO of ISSF said, “ISSF is excited about investing in Abjjad, an innovative provider of much-needed Arabic digital content. At ISSF, we are always delighted to help innovative and scalable startups, particularly those managed by women and youth, achieve their full potential.”
Obaida Rawashdeh, CEO of Rimal Capital added, “Although we live a busy life, many still want to read and because this need is fulfilled by Abjjad in a unique model, you find Abjjad to be one of the few businesses that started working even before being extensively worked on.”
Ahmed Tantash, CEO at JordInvest commented, “As a regional investment house, Jordinvest is shifting its strategy towards investing in the new economy, whereby Abjjad correlates best with this vision in terms of technology, market reach and content.”
The newly raised funds will be used to invest in users and ebooks acquisition where both are supported with ongoing investments in product and technology. Abjjad is looking to become the biggest digital Arabic library and the highest revenue-generating platform for Arabic authors and publishers while providing users with the best digital reading experience.