EdVentures, the corporate venture capital arm of Egypt’s Nahdet Misr Publishing Group, has recently announced that it will be investing $1.1 million in Jeel, an education and entertainment platform for preschoolers in the region.
EdVentures made the announcement at its summit on the future of EdTech in the Middle East and North Africa region. The event was organised in collaboration with HolonIQ, the US-based platform for impact market intelligence.
The 2022 Global Impact Summit comes as EdVentures celebrates its fifth anniversary and thereby showcases the future of EdTech and investment opportunities in the Middle East and North Africa.
Commenting on the latest development, CEO of Nahdet Misr Publishing House & Founder of EdVentures, Dalia Ibrahim, said:
Driven by the need to transform the EdTech sector locally and regionally, we established EdVentures in 2017, and managed to support more than 66 startups, and invested in 13 startups with a market capitalization of $75 million, creating 1,400 jobs.
Ibrahim further added:
Moving forward, EdVentures is seeking more investments in EdTech startups, while expanding globally.
Founded in 2019 by Ahmed Sobaih in the US with headquarters in Riyadh and Cairo, Jeel provides children with exclusive and safe edutainment series, shows, songs, stories, and games. The team behind the platform consists of more than 60 full-time professionals and experts, besides more than 150 part-time and freelance creatives, and the number is rising as the startup grows.
The company’s main project is Jeel App, a mobile application for children aged between 3 to 9 years old, with access for parents to control tools and rich parenting content. The application is created upon an educational and psychological criterion that highlights values and ethics, under the supervision of parenting specialists.
As for MENA’s EdTech landscape, according to Holon IQ’s latest data, Egypt has the largest share in the growing EdTech ecosystems across the region, which is home to 1,500 EdTech companies, followed by the UAE and KSA. Workforce and corporate training innovation represents almost half of all education technology founded and headquartered in MENA, followed by the K-12 education, higher education, while the pre-K makes up a very small part of the overall education technology landscape.
Nahdet Misr Publishing Group is an Egyptian leading learning organization that has been a pioneer in the fields of education and publishing in the MENA region since its establishment in 1938. The Group provides integrated services through its eight subsidiaries, including curricula development, professional development for educators, digital learning, educational software development, vocational education and technical training solutions and publishing solutions.
In 2017, Nahdet Misr launched MENA’s first EdTech VC, EdVentures, which offers incubation, acceleration and investment programs for startups operating in the education sector.
Last year in July, Jeel had received $1.2 million in a seed funding round led by Kuwaiti and Jordanian angel investors.
