The Oman Technology Fund has been actively investing in North African startups, from the recently acquired Tunisian gaming startup Galactech, to Egypt’s Homzmart, Bekia and SWVL, the investor is back again, this time investing in Tunisian edTech startup Shape. Through this round, OTF injected 50 thousand dollars into the capital of the Tunisian company.
Founded in 2021 by Rahma Abid, Shape has developed a digital platform that allows professionals to access continuous learning training. Users of this platform can develop a personalized training plan that meets their career plan.
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“I started with a simple story in my instagram account on September 29, 2021. I launched the first cohort in October 2021 with 12 candidates. I generated revenue from the first cohort. The first cohort was with google meet, slack and teachable. I had a lot of technical and logistical problems, I spent a lot of time with the candidates, I got sick, I had covid for 20 days. The program was stopped for 20 days, because without me the program doesn’t exist, I did the whole process by myself,” Rahma Abid said, about her startup journey.
“Then I developed the idea and automated the whole process so that it works without me. And again, I had new problems because I didn’t have enough resources to have a good product, so I applied to the flywheel AIR 1 program in March 2022, I got a rejection in May 2022. But I didn’t give up, I applied again in September with the new version of Shape. I launched the coaching program for future employees in October, and received more than 400 candidates but unfortunately I could only accept 20 candidates. The first cohort was in partnership with Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) Program. On November 8, 2022 I applied for startup label (before a few hours of deadline, and the surprise I found a technical problem of SMT but I applied). I was awarded the the startup label from Startup Tunisia, par Smart Capital on December 1, 2022,” she added.
According to Abid, by the end of 2022, Shape did the following in numbers :
“3 Cohorts in the Shape your future program; 20 people recruited by our partners; 30 partners including two universities; 1 cohort in the highlight your skills program with 20 candidates selected and 350 candidates in progress for future cohorts; our database contains over 1000 people needing Shape and this number is the real challenge for me; we also have partners in France and Canada.”
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OTF is very involved in the Tunisian entrepreneurial scene. Apart from Galactech, the fund has also participated in the financing of several Tunisian startups such as SgharToon, Wattnow, Avidea, and Seemba.
Shape E-Learning Shape E-Learning
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard