Nadya Eka Lestari
TechInAfrica — Leading music streaming service of the Middle East & North Africa, Anghami has announced that it has signed JPMorgan to work on their next round of funding. The company is also considering multiple acquisition offers by multiple parties, according to Elie Habib, the co-founder of the Beirut-based startup.
Citing unnamed sources, Bloomberg had reported that Anghami is considering different options including a potential sale to Dubai-based Orbit Showtime Network (OSN) in a deal that could value it as much as $400 million.
Anghami was the leading and only serious player in the music streaming space in the MENA region for almost seven years. However, since late 2018, they’ve been facing competition from Spotify and Kingdom Holding-backed company, Deezer.
But Elie said that Anghami’s growth hasn’t stalled due to their entry, “2019 was the best year for Anghami. Even with Spotify and Dezeer around with all their money, we’ve been able to do great and are still by far the leading music streaming service in the Middle East & North Africa with 10 billion music streams in 2019. No one is even close.”
Anghami had raised its last round of financing in 2016, “We care a lot about the profitability and that is why the money lasted quite long as it should have,” he said. He added that their main goal is still growth and they’re in no rush to exit.
The startup that was founded in 2011 by Eddy Maroun and Elie Habib has banked in over $40 million to date from Samena Capital, Middle East Venture Partners, MBC Ventures, and some other investors of the region. It had 21 million users and 1 million paying subscribers in 2019 Q1 and the company was on track to do over $20 million in revenue in 2017.
According to Bloomberg, a Dubai-based payTV provider, OSN is looking to acquire Anghami although it had not been confirmed yet. OSN has been struggling for years with the rise of online video streaming services like Netflix and StarzPlay in the region.
Source: menabytes.com
