Intella - Afrikan Heroes

Egyptian Deeptech Startup Intella Secures $3.4 Million in Pre-Series A Funding

October 4, 2023

Intella, a deeptech startup headquartered in Saudi Arabia with Egyptian roots, has successfully concluded a pre-Series A funding round, securing a substantial $3.4 million. The primary investors in this round include HALA Ventures and Wa’ed Ventures, the venture capital arm of Aramco, with additional contributions from Sanabil 500 and INSEAD’s alumni angel network, among others. This infusion of capital will serve a dual purpose: supporting Intella’s expansion into the Saudi market and facilitating the development of AI models tailored specifically for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Why the Investors Invested

The investors’ decision to contribute to Intella’s funding round is underpinned by several compelling factors. In the first place, the relocation of Intella’s headquarters from Cairo to Riyadh in 2023 aligns strategically with Saudi Arabia’s growing tech and AI landscape. The Kingdom is rapidly becoming a hub for technological advancements, and investors recognize the potential for significant growth and innovation in this market. As Nour Altaher, CEO and Co-founder of Intella, noted, this move perfectly complements their expansion plans.

In addition to its strategic location, Intella boasts impressive achievements in AI technology. The startup subjected its system to rigorous testing, logging over 30,000 hours of Arabic audio. The results, particularly with Intella Voice, are remarkable, with a staggering 95.73% accuracy rate. This surpasses well-established tech leaders like Google’s speech-to-text, Open AI’s whisper, Meta’s seamless M4T, and IBM Watson. This technological prowess positions Intella as a frontrunner in the field of Arabic voice technology.

Moreover, Intella is not content with merely offering transcription services. It is venturing into audio analytics, encompassing functions such as summarization, sentiment analysis, topic extraction, and call scoring. This demonstrates their commitment to pushing the boundaries of what AI can achieve in the realm of voice technology in the MENA region.

The investors, led by HALA Ventures, recognize Intella’s pivotal role in bridging the gap between the Arab-speaking world and global AI advancements. They view Intella’s mission as crucial in ensuring the region remains relevant in the ever-evolving landscape of technological trends. This aligns with the growing demand for specialized Arabic voice technology, positioning Intella favorably to cater to the unique needs of the Middle East.

A Look at Intella

Intella, founded in 2021 by Nour Altaher and Omar Mansour, is a deeptech company headquartered in Saudi Arabia. Its core focus is on providing real-time, on-demand market research services to businesses across various sectors. As part of its strategy for growth and innovation, Intella relocated its headquarters from Cairo to Riyadh in 2023 to tap into the burgeoning tech and AI scene in Saudi Arabia.

Intella’s unique selling point lies in its exceptional AI technology, particularly in the domain of Arabic voice. Through rigorous testing and development, they achieved a remarkable 95.73% accuracy rate in Arabic audio processing, outperforming global tech giants. Intella’s offerings extend beyond transcription to encompass advanced audio analytics, including summarization, sentiment analysis, topic extraction, and call scoring.

The startup’s mission is to connect the Arab-speaking world with the forefront of AI progress, ensuring that the region remains a significant player in the global tech landscape. With the infusion of $3.4 million in funding, Intella is well-positioned to expand its presence in the MENA region, enhance its product portfolio, and solidify its leadership in voice technology innovation. The demand for specialized Arabic voice technology is on the rise, and Intella is poised to meet these needs and contribute to the region’s technological advancement.

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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

Hala Ventures Leads $1m Seed Round In Egyptian Market Research Startup Intella

April 2, 2022

Intella, one of the first real-time intelligence and research providers in the Middle East and North Africa has raised $1 million in seed funding. Hala Ventures led the round, with Falak Startups, which is run by Egypt’s Ministry of International Cooperation and Egypt Ventures, also taking part. Beyond Capital and other well-known angel investors also helped the company raise the money.

“We are thrilled to begin this new chapter of Intella’s journey. This investment will strongly cement our growth strategy and give us the opportunity to support various organizations by gaining clearer insights into the markets in which they operate. With the help of such funding, we will be able to attract the best calibres and expand on the platform’s technology and current offerings by launching a Platform as a Service (PAAS) and developing new AI-based predictive analytic tools. This will ultimately help Intella ramp up its capacity to capture 1.2M+ data points per day, while growing its panellist engagement platform to reach 500K verified usersm,” Co-founder and CEO of Intella, Nour Altaher, said.

As a reminder, Intella was launched in 2021. Since then, it has been able to help clients in a wide range of industries, from startups and small businesses to marketing agencies and top consulting firms, as well as government bodies, like the Saudi Arabian Ministry of HRSD and the Saudi Arabian Ministry of ICT. Impact Partners and Itmam have also helped the company write the first “Tech and Entrepreneurship Perception Report” for Saudi Arabia, which includes hundreds of important people from the country’s government and business worlds.

A founding partner at Hala Ventures called AI “the most important thing in making businesses more efficient and increasing productivity,” he said. As a result of Intella’s cutting-edge tools and data, Hala Ventures has a lot of faith in the company’s abilities and the value it will add to market research, he said.

A Look At What The Startup Does

Intella is a forward-thinking, digitally native market research platform designed to meet the demands of today’s ever-changing world, which is increasingly data-driven. Intella provides real-time, on-demand insight and market research to a diverse range of clients. These include government bodies, financial institutions, startups, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) operating in the domains of financial technology, banking, marketing, healthcare, education, logistics, and vehicles throughout the MENA region, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Intella was founded in 2021 by Nour Altaher and Omar Mansour with the goal of disrupting established market models by bringing real-time, high-quality, trustworthy research to all types of enterprises with various budgets.

“Intella is a real technological innovation, offering predictive machine-learning and analytic models based on new pattern discovery and big data, which has proved to be of unparalleled value for companies aiming at making informed decisions, and meeting the needs of their customers promptly. That is exactly why we have been working to provide companies with real-time market research based on the latest AI technologies, since our launch. We are also aware of the capabilities of technology in enhancing market research, and as such we are keen to provide our clients with analysis tools that can deliver fast, precise insights and increase the efficiency of the resources available to companies,” Intella’s Co-Founder & CTO, Omar Mansour, said.

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