Eksab’s is now in a sweet spot to tighten its grip over the Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) market in MENA. The company announced earlier in the week that it had received seed investment from 500 Startups.
While Eksab has so far remained tight-lipped about the size of the investment, the company did acknowledge that it was in six figures.
The timing of the investment is also important considering that the company is looking to further its growth ambitions by banking on the iconic African Cup of Nations tournament as it prepares to go live in Egypt.
The startup is optimistic about its business model and profitability considering that the Middle East and Africa is home to more than one billion football fans.
“We live in a region that is obsessed with football. I remember going out to hand out flyers on the day that Egypt made it to the World Cup. People were fighting over Eksab flyers with the Egyptian team’s picture on them,” said Co-Founder and CEO Aly Mahmoud, further adding, “It was an intense yet pivotal moment. We knew we had tapped into something special.”
Eksab says its main focus is to add more charm to every football match played in the region and beyond. Users just have to download the Eksab app, enter their predictions about live football games from around the world, and collect points based on the accuracy of their predictions. The fans with the highest points are then rewarded for their insights and intuition.
Worth noting here is that Eksab claims to have processed more than 5 million predictions in its first year of operation.
Meanwhile, explaining the decision to invest in the still-quite-young DFS platform, Sharif El-Badawi, Partner at 500 Startups, said: “Their team is very focused on the user-experience, talking to their users daily while iterating to deliver the most engaging platform possible. We believe we can add significant support to Eksab with our investment.”
