A LESSON IN GOOD TIMING

 Competitors turned cofounders Hamdi Tabbaa, Sabri Hakim, and Hussein AlSarabi launched their edtech platform Abwaab in 2019, months before the pandemic swept across the globe. Today, they're making after-school tutoring accessible to 160 million students in MENAP and beyond.

In September 2019, just six months before the pandemic hit the Middle East, entrepreneurs Sabri Hakim, Hussein AlSarabi, and Hamdi Tabbaa launched edtech Abwaab in their home market of Jordan, aiming to disrupt after-school tutoring by providing a platform where school students could learn, ask and solve questions, compete with each other, and track their progress and performance. It was a timely bet. Back then, no one could have predicted the challenges that the pandemic would pose for the 160 million school students across the Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan (MENAP), creating an urgent need for innovative solutions to support remote learning and distance education.

The company closed its first external funding round in March 2020—a $2.4 million pre-seed round with investment from Adam Tech Ventures, Endure Capital, Equitrust, and the World Bank-backed Innovative Startups SMEs Fund, along with several former and current executives from Uber and Netflix. In 2021, Abwaab bagged another $5.1 million seed, followed by a $20 million Series A, bringing its total funding to $27.8 million.

As well as enticing investors, it’s also a favorite among students. Abwaab was the number one rated app on the Play Store across all categories in Jordan in October 2022, rating higher than Snapchat and TikTok for a week. In Egypt, Abwaab was ranked the number one app in education for four consecutive weeks, according to the founders.