Media SPAC legitimizes MENA for Asia investors

The company in question is Anghami, an Abu Dhabi-based music streaming provider with offices in Dubai, Cairo, Beirut, and Riyadh. It has agreed to merge with Vista Media Acquisition Company, a NASDAQ-listed SPAC sponsored by a group of Southeast Asian media professionals that has raised $100 million.

The transaction will make Anghami the first MENA tech company to list on NASDAQ next month and sets up exits for private equity backers including Middle East Venture Partners and Samena Capital. Wassim Moukahhal, a managing director at Samena, described it as a potential impetus for more Asian familiarity and confidence in the region going forward.

“Having access to a SPAC and the American equity market is another step toward legitimizing this market [MENA] and proving to investors that this is a very attractive market to invest in,” Moukahhal told AVCJ. “This example demonstrates that Asian capital has good opportunities in the MENA region.”

Previous traction on this front includes Uber’s acquisition of ride-hailing app Careem for around $3 billion last year and Amazon’s acquisition of e-commerce marketplace Souq for $580 million in 2017. Both Careem and Souq were backed in part by Asia-based private equity investors.

It also comes as the industry flags a growing cross-border opportunity between Asia and MENA, especially in terms of tech-enabled business models. Total investment numbers remain relatively slight but have seen a recent uptick. According to Preqin, VC investment in MENA with Asian participation averaged only $1.2 billion a year between 2016 and 2019. Last year, it jumped to $2.1 billion.

Samena is conscious of these themes. The Dubai-based firm typically invests across MENA, South Asia, and Southeast Asia in brick-and-mortar businesses but has recently embraced more tech-oriented plays. The shift has progressed in step with global business digitalization trends, recently accelerated by COVID-19. The Anghami investment is one of the firm’s early moves in this direction.

Anghami claims to be the first legal music streaming platform in MENA. The company offers a freemium service to more than 70 million users across the region with a content library of some 57 million Arabic and international songs. It has several adjacent music-related services as well as social features such as a chat function for sharing and discussing songs.

“This company represents access to more than 400 million people living across 22 countries, spanning two continents,” Moukahhal added. “They have extremely high digital connectivity, high literacy rates, and varying degrees of consumer spending levels across countries, with Gulf citizens having very high spending power. This company provides access to this population – and you can apply the same logic to lot of other companies.”

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• Topics
• MENA
• GPs
• Exits
• Media
• IPO
• Samena Capital
• SPAC