Kitab Sawti
STARTUP RETAIL INCUBATOR
Kitab Sawti
Year of establishment: 2016
Names of co-founders: Sebastian Bond and Anton Pollak
About the brand: Kitab Sawti produces and distributes spoken Arabic audio content for 400 million Arabic speakers worldwide. It is a venture backed company with headquarters in Dubai and teams in Stockholm, Paris, Dubai, Cairo, Jeddah and Nablus. Kitab Sawti has 35 employees, led by a management team of experienced entrepreneurs from the Middle East, Sweden and the US. According to the brand, Arabic audiobook consumer data and content metadata that Kitab Sawti provides did not exist in the region prior to their entry and remain unique values and prerequisites for a flourishing publishing industry.
Commercial success: Kitab Sawti has seen one million downloads with limited marketing. The brand has registered 17% monthly growth rate of paying users since premium launch. It has established cooperation with all the leading publishing houses in the region. Nine out of 10 users recommend Kitab Satwi to their friends.
Phased business transformation: Kitab Sawti has invested in a strong foundation to enable strong future growth. Between 2016 and 2017, the brand acquired exclusive copyrights to build a strong content catalogue; developed the technology platform and set-up proprietary database; and built a strong audiobook production process along with a network of narrators. In the next phase, Kitab Sawti made its app available for free to get access to users and data. Between 2018 and 2019, Kitab Sawti closed its first B2B deal and testing. The brand continues to strengthen its team and platform.
Major hurdles crossed: It is always challenging to build a new industry from scratch, and as such Kitab Sawti feels the need to do all the heavy lifting and build it from ground up. That takes a lot of time and hard work. In the beginning very few people were aware of audiobooks and its advantages, but over the years Kitab Sawti has seen the market pick up considerably.