Egyptian fantasy football platform, Eksab, which claims to be making football more exciting and interactive for every fan in both regions through online community building and gaming just announced that it has closed $3 million in a seed funding round. With this, the total investment raised by the company accounts for $3.7 million.
Partnership with leading football clubs
The investment round was led by 4DX Ventures (invested in Sokowatch) alongside participation from P1 Ventures, Darwazah Captial, and Golden Palm Investments. 4DX Ventures participated in the $500k funding round that Eksab raised in late 2020.
Also, a number of strategic angel investors from the sports and entertainment ecosystem from Egypt and elsewhere participated in the round.
The Cairo-headquartered startup will use the funds to scale its user base across the MENA region and Africa. Also, it will invest in product development, talent acquisition for product and engineering, and executive partnerships with some leading global football clubs in MENA.
This new financing round comes ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup slated for November 2022 in the Middle East for the first time ever.
Commenting on the round, Aly Mahmoud, Eksab Founder and CEO said, “This is a phenomenally high growth period in our business as we look to take our platform to new audiences. We are also really excited to have some leading global investors and partners join this round. The fact that our previous investors are all doubling down on Eksab highlights the great effort the team has put in over the last 12 months and the massive opportunity in the sector.”
Dan Marlo, Managing Partner at 4DX added “We have been consistently impressed by the growth Eksab has demonstrated over the past 12 months, powered by technology-backed innovation and unrivalled market knowledge, by Aly and his team. The football gaming market is enormous globally, but especially in MENA. Eksab has built a product and a community that has been rapidly growing in the MENA region but can easily scale across the continent – which fits 4DX’s investment ethos perfectly”.
Play-to-earn gaming platform
Founded by Aly Mahmoud (CEO) in 2018 in Cairo, Eksab works with a mission to make football more exciting and interactive for every fan in the Middle East and Africa, through gaming and online community building. Players can choose free or premium competitions, make predictions and choose line-ups, with winners climbing the leaderboard and winning cash and prizes.
Currently, Eksab is the first and only licensed fantasy football platform in Egypt and plans to acquire additional licences to operate in three additional countries by mid-2022, in a bid to capture the lion’s share of the multi-billion dollar football ecosystem in the region, serving more than 500 million football fans in the Middle East and Africa.
It has over 700K registered users in Egypt on its platform who participate in daily, weekly and monthly fantasy and predictions contests, with its user base making over a million ‘picks’ each month.
After the launch of its premium competitions in 2021, Eksab has grown its paying user base by an average of 60% month on month. Already, it has partnered with over 10 top-tier Egyptian football players and content creators and is rapidly becoming a household brand name amongst football fans.
Currently, Eksab is in plans to add the functionality to integrate with leading blockchain-based platforms to enable football fans to capitalise on Web 3.0’s increased speed and transparency. Its mission is to become the go-to platform for football play-to-earn gaming, content, stats, NFTs, digital collectibles and merchandise. Eksab has been ranked as one of the top 20 fantasy platforms worldwide.
