Almentor raise $6.5 million Series B round from Partech, Sawari Ventures and Sango Capital
Almentor, a video-based online learning platform for the Middle East and North Africa, has raised $6.5m in a Series B round led by San Francisco and Paris-based VC firm, Partech from its Africa Fund.
The round also saw participation from Sawari Ventures, Fellow Series A investor Egypt Ventures, and Sango Capital.
In 2016, Almentor kickstarted its investment drive with a $3.5 million seed round, three years later, the startup raised another $4.5 million in a Series A led by Egypt’s Sawari Ventures.
With the rise of this Series B investment, the Dubai-based startup has secured 14.5 million in total funding.
Founded in 2016, by the duo of Dr. Ihab Fikry and Ibrahim Kamel, Almentor is an online video-based platform that seeks to fill the online learning gap of Arabic Speakers. In partnership with hundreds of leaders, educators, and experts, the platform offers courses and talks in various fields like health, humanities, technology, entrepreneurship, business management, lifestyle, drama, sports, corporate communication, and digital media.
The startup provides Arab learners the chance to learn highly sought-after skills that will help them advance rapidly in their professional careers and personal lives.
The platform claims to have the largest continuous learning library in the region and one of the biggest worldwide. It also has offices in Dubai, Cairo, and Saudi Arabia. Its video content is developed in-house and made in Arabic and English.
According to the CEO, the reason they developed the platform was to come up with a state-of-the-art platform that will provide a balanced and objective learning experience for people in the MENA region. Their course content is in Arabic because they recognize the fact that many people in the region cannot properly learn with any other language other than Arabic.
The Almentor platform can be accessed from around the world but the content is focused on North Africa and the Middle East.
The startup claims, it has successfully delivered over 2 million learning experiences to users. With this new raise, they intend to improve on their content production and quality and intensify their marketing efforts in the MENA Region.
“We are now leading the continuous video learning industry in the Arab region, and we have a responsibility that goes beyond our ambitions for Almentor. Our responsibility now is to work unceasingly to improve the industry as a whole in the Arab region, and this can only be achieved through gaining the confidence of the Arab learners in the value, professionalism, and impartiality of the content provided by the platform and working in line with the global learning trends,” the CEO said.
Speaking on the investment for Partech, general partner Cyril Collon said: “Since our first interaction, we have been very impressed by Ihab and Ibrahim, two fantastic mission-driven entrepreneurs who have been executing on a bold vision since 2016, and who built the leading Arabic self-learning go-to content provider in the Middle East and Africa.”
He added that they look forward to supporting the startup in its next phase of growth as they expand to provide on-demand personal learning and development options to the over 430 million Arabic-speaking population in the MENA region.