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Santa Monica-based television discovery app Vyu has just announced it has secured $825,000 in seed funding led by Jabbar Internet Group, a Middle East focused venture capital firm. Vyu wants to be a place for Middle-Eastern television watchers to share, discuss and discover television content online. The startup is led by Ahmed Nassef, the former head of Maktoon, an Arabic email service and news aggregator company that was bought by Yahoo for $164 million. He later was Yahoo’s vice president and managing director of Middle East and Africa, and will bring several former Maktoob employees to the startup.
Despite the chaos in the Middle East created by ISIS, the recent Israeli-Gazan war and numerous other clashes, Nassef thinks the time is ripe for Middle Eastern entrepreneurship. In particular he sees the Middle East’s young and highly engaged social media population as eager for new content.
“People are really hungry to express themselves,” said CEO Ahmed Nassef. And just like everywhere else, “people like to share their views about their favorite programs.”
The Middle East is one of the most Internet engaged regions in the world. For example, “if you look at engagement on YouTube the number one isn’t the United States or the UK, it is Saudi Arabia,” said Nassef. The Arab Spring was also very much driven by high levels of youth engagement on Twitter.
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For Vyu that means building a mobile app that will allow Middle Eastern youth to talk about television on their mobile phones. “For many of these people the first time they interact with the Internet is on a mobile device,” said Nassef. “Some of these markets have some of the highest levels of mobile phone penetration. Penetration in the United Arab Emirates is almost 200 percent in terms of mobile devices per consumer. They are walking around with two devices.”
Despite high engagement on American sites like YouTube and Twitter, Middle-Eastern consumers don’t have IMDB-like places to discuss television. Instead, Nassef said a large portion of the conversation is held on old school discussion boards.
“You don’t have as much quality digital content available in the Middle East,” said Nassef. “You don’t have easy access to quality content and waste a lot of time looking for information, so simplifying that process for viewers is the key.”
Vyu will be a “combination of content that is aggregated, some original content, and information on the actors in the show,” said Nassef. The company envisions the app will allow users to follow news, find gossip and consume social content around their favorite television shows. The app will first be written in Arabic and later Nassef envisions English and French translations.
The app could also be useful to advertisers too. Many people in the region receive their television via satellite making determining the demographics of television watchers and ratings difficult.
“There’s nothing like the Neilson ratings here. It’s kind of a closed box.” said Nassef. "In many of these markets there is an aversion to transparency in the advertising market.”
“As an application like this gains traction it becomes really useful data to TV programmers,” said Nassef. “You get a lot interesting of demo and behavior data around programming.”
Vyu is scheduled to launch internationally in the next several months. Ultimately, Vyu believes the app will resonate with other developing regions as well, and even in the US, but to be sure there is a big focus on the Middle East. The startup will maintain headquarters in Los Angeles, where it is developing the app, and it will be establishing an office in Dubai soon. The app will be available on iOS and Android.
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