Thoughts about our Investment in Yebab.com
First of all, I would like to welcome a great entrepreneur to N2V family, Murshed Ahmed. I met Murshed first time at Dubai Demo Camp that was organized in and sponsored by Dubai Internet City. He was one of five innovative entrepreneurs who presented a demo that day, but I remember that he was the only one who presented a viable investment case. He knew what he wanted, and made it direct to the point.
With a proven business model that is successful in UAE, Murshed was not asking for cash only, he wanted an investor/partner who can add value by helping in expanding the company’s operation to KSA and other Arab countries. This seemed like a perfect fit for our early startups investment program. I remember our CEO Rashid Al-Ballaa saying: “We can help this guy, let’s explore ways of cooperation”.
As an internet holding company, N2V expands by three approaches: building companies internally, acquiring companies, and investing in startups that can benefit from our platform companies.So N2V is not a traditional venture capital fund management firm, it is a value-add investor because it provides capital and business/technical support.
After analyzing Yebab.com and receiving its business plan, we found out that in addition to cash investment, we can help in promoting it through Net Advantage (our online advertising platform), SNSEO (our online marketing platform), EDC (our web design and development platform), OneCard (our online payment platform), and other services provided by our network of long term partners in the market (who give us preferential rates for their services).
In addition, because Yebab.com is targeting women communities in the Arab World, a great synergy can be achieved with HawaaWorld.com, the biggest online women community in the region with more than 5 million unique visits a month.Moreover, Yebab now has offices and human resources in the four countries we exist-in who can help big time in PR, accounting, and legal efforts.
It took us more than 4 months to finalize the deal. Not only because of the tough negotiations we had with Murshed, but also because we at N2V have a unique offering and a unique term sheet that is not a “copy” of traditional VC term sheets. So we needed to explain our model, investment process and new terms in details to the entrepreneur.
Finally, I hope that within the coming few months inshallah, we all will witness the growth of Yebab.com with a new design and new features to be the leading wedding portal in the Arab World and a great Arab entrepreneur success story.
