The Omnichannel conversational AI and digital assistants tool, DXwand, has announced the closure of its pre-Series A funding round of $1 million, headed by Huashan Capital, and with commitments from angel investors Mr Mohsen Abulleil and Mr Ahmed Bakeer. US-based VC firm SOSV, the early investor in DXwand’s seed round, has also supported the due diligence and syndication of this financing round as part of its strong trust in the company’s future.
“We’re most grateful to our investors for their continuous support and trust in us,” said Ahmed Mahmoud, Founder and CEO at DXwand. “With gaining more trust from various stakeholders to lead the AI services industry in MENA, and having been achieving 11X year-over-year growth, we look forward to propelling this success even more in the coming period. We can’t forget where all this had started. I am genuinely grateful to Egypt’s Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA), who invited us to the Hangout with VCs event that led us to get exposed to SOSV and other overseas investors in this round and upcoming rounds. It was the most impactful matchmaking event I attended in Egypt.”
This funding will be used by DXwand to accelerate its growth across the area, increase its market share, and accelerate its AI research to further differentiate its solutions on the market.
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Why The Investors Invested
“Conversational interfaces are the future of user engagement and we think that the DXwand team is very well positioned thanks to their proprietary Arabic dialects NLP and personalized recommendations engines that set them apart from the rest of the competitors. DXwand was one of the first investments for SOSV in MENA; the positive experience led to more than a dozen investments in the region,” Says Oscar Ramos, SOSV General Partner.
“What we liked about DXwand was that it provided a clear quantifiable value proposition to its clients — reducing customer service time by 70%, greatly reducing the manpower needed, and driving up to 3 times higher customer engagement,” said David Chen, of Shanghai-based Huashan Capital. “We’re very proud to invest in the DXwand team. The results and growth that they have achieved so far are testaments to the value of their products and services. AI-powered customer services are blossoming across the globe in every customer-facing interaction, and we’re looking forward to supporting DXwand’s efforts to expand into the whole MENA region,” Chen added.
A Look At What DXwand Does
Founded in 2018 by Ahmed Mahmoud, DXwand is a smart, AI-driven software that automates text and voice conversations between customers and businesses in call centres, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, via SMS, or on a website. Their conversational AI platform understands Arabic and English slang and can extract insights from talks and show them on dashboards so that organizations can make immediate, educated decisions. Their analytical platform and dashboards with in-depth business data facilitate business success by converting conversations into leads and revenues with an emphasis on client retention and acquisition.
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“I’m thrilled to see DXwand secure its second investment deal with investors they met last year during our Hangout with VCs event. This is part of ITIDA’s mandate to attract more VCs to the ecosystem in Egypt to help more companies to scale and accelerate their revenue growth,” ITIDA’s CEO, Amr Mahfouz commented.
“It’s an exciting time for the entrepreneurship sector in Egypt as global VCs are not only keeping an eye on Egyptian startups but are also investing large amounts of money helping us realize our targets and achieve tremendous year-on-year (YoY) growth,” Mahfouz stated.
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“Despite the unprecedented challenges posed by the multi-crisis context, many opportunities emerge where we’ll spare no effort to carve them out, extend our support to the entrepreneurship ecosystem, and position Egypt as a leading technology hub for both offshoring businesses and innovative startups,” ITIDA’s CEO added.
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. You can book a session and speak with him using the link: https://insightsbyexperts.com/view_expert/charles-rapulu-udoh