SHUAA Capital tunes in to music streaming service Anghami

The United Arab Emirates-based financial services firm SHUAA Capital has invested in Anghami, a Middle East and North Africa-focussed music streaming service.

The investment is a part of the funding round raised by Lebanon-headquartered Anghami, which claims to be the first legal music streaming platform in the Arab world.

Jassim Alseddiqi, CEO at SHUAA Capital, said in a statement that Anghami is “ideally aligned” with the firm’s investment criteria. “This is a continuation of our investment journey into the technology space. We are keen to invest in technology solutions and services.”

Anghami was launched in November 2012 and last raised funding in 2016. It allows users to download and stream Arabic and international music. At present, the service caters to 70 million users across the Arab world.

The investment by SHUAA comes as Anghami reportedly plans to move its headquarters and research and development hub to Abu Dhabi in the UAE, from Beirut.

According to an Al Jazeera report, the move is likely to take place in the next couple of months and comes as Lebanon struggles in the wake of an economic and political upheaval.

The music streaming platform already has offices in Dubai in the UAE, Cairo in Egypt and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. In 2019, Anghami delivered 10 billion music streams.

The Al Jazeera report said that Aghami’s move will be seen as another success story for the Innovation Programme of the Abu Dhabi Investment Office, which has pooled $545 million to get businesses to invest in Abu Dhabi.

SHUAA Capital cited a recent research by Grand View that said the global music streaming market is likely to continue growing. The Middle East and Africa region is likely to achieve an annualised growth of over 21% from 2020 to 2027, compared with 17.8% for the global music streaming industry.