SEJAAL APP (سجال) Inc.

Sejaal empowers outreach to Digital Arabic Content. We select relevant website, aggregate its content into topics, and feed it to users according to their passions. We provide a lifelong opportunity to ALL young Arabs to easily access information and to question them through our social learning platform with their peers.

SEJAAL is an aggregator of Arabic Content (text, podcasts, videos) app that selects quality and relevant websites, aggregates its content into themes and sub-topics, and distributes them to each user according to their preferences. To our users, we are a social learning platform on which users connect with other users on content. Sejaal means « conversation, debate ». For that matter, young Arabs are able to acquire new perspectives, obtain answers to their questions, and find inspiration across a platform with their own peers.

To our community of website owners, we enact as their media partners a number of services from content creation to effective monetization:

• Providing them with consumer business intelligence data to create ever more relevant content and help protect their IP.
• Packaging their content into magazine-polished design with more attractive ergonomics, motions, and features.
• Distributing their content in an impactful way by reaching out youth through Arabic Technological Innovation : machine learning, AI, Data Science built for the Arabic Language.
• Creating a frame for meaningful consumption by creating more brand engagement.
• These solutions lead to the optimisation of their content, hence monetise it more effectively.

Today’s ability to have easy outreach to information is crucial for productivity, adaptability, and informed decision making which are at the cornerstone to developing the skills of not only the future generation but of this young generation in the present.

Through SEJAAL we are killing two birds with one stone : (1) affecting the lives of potentially 500 million Arabic-Speakers, of which one quarter is under the age of 30 with the fastest growing popualtion segment of 15 to 24. (2) giving Arabic Content Online a more prominent place on the worldwide web map as a medium to affect positively the lives of its native speaking population.

Young Arabs feel lonely with passions. As a result, they aimlessly burn time on Social Media, looking for answers, perspectives & inspiration – and for massive majority of them – in Arabic, their mother-tongue.

Though not massive, Digital Arabic Content exists and is massively rising. Yet, its creation could be more relevant, its production more up to standards, its consumption more meaningful, and distribution more effective in reaching its young audience; searching for it.

Hence, this hinders quality skills development and critical/flexible thinking as well as inspirational content that could bring answers and perspectives. Above all, it sustains exclusion. 

Learning opportunities must answer the habits and mindset of youth, i.e : information readily available, catered to them in a personable manner, on which they have free, inclusive, and social engagement.

World Bank's Chief Innovation Officer wrote about how boosting online Arabic Content supports a diversified economy, turning into a much needed knowledge economy ; as well improve learning and income opportunities among young people. Quoting Vein : « Why does this matter for development ? The ability to download and upload content quickly is central to creativity, teamwork and information-sharing, the hallmarks of a vibrant 21st-century knowledge economy. “ Source.

We measure the impact of our solution among young people aged 15 to 24 through key metrics:

• Activation Strategy : Users download the app and choose their topics and consult their feeds.
• Acquisition Strategy : Users reads through content or search through content.
• Retention Startegy : Users connect onto our app once a day.
• Referral Strategy : Users share articles through other social media platforms or invite their friends to join the platform.
• Revenue Strategy : Ad revenue starts to increase.

Deployment of platform happens through partnership announcement to their audience: Universities, NGO’s, website owners.

Track downloads in the app store - Activation Strategy

Number of reads daily - Acquisition

Number of connections - Retention

Our solution is innovative on three various levels:

• Its building approach : Personally toured 9 Arab countries (East to West) during two months. I interviewed personally over 180 young people on a intuitively built wireframe prototype.
• Its technology : Implementing the many scientific research in Arabic Computing in the fields of Algorithmics, Data Science, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence, built from the point of view of Arabic Language.
• Its focus : We are not a mere Arabic Content Aggregator. We are taking aggregation to whole new level contributing to the full deployment of Digital Arabic Content.

To create this solution, I personally toured the Arab World and interviewed 180 young people face-to-face, listening to their stories, struggles, and hopes. They would request particular features and functionalities. They communicated their fears, their concerns, and their no-go zones regarding the product. From its outset, the product was designed not only for them, but WITH them and complying with their own realities of internet infrastructure, economic capabilities, language skills, and social predicaments. We intend to open ‘Write your own blog’ functionality which will include these young people as an integral part of increasing Digital Arabic Content.

Our solution is free of charge and will be deployed through API website, which makes it accessible to all young people with a laptop/home computer as 60% of the connections in the MENA region are through home modems. Following the trend of increasing mobile connection, we will apply our API to the Android as they are the widest smartphones available in the region. We will offer an offline version, where users are able to save articles for them to read without Internet. Our solution will be made reachable through a network of partners which are already catering for their needs.

Other reasons explain the free access of our product. (1) Target group does not have the culture of paying for immaterial things. (2) Web audience have sense of entitlement to content. (3) We cannot directly make money off content created by third-parties. (4) Data is more valuable over time than direct payment.

Hence why, our business model will be deployed incrementally throughout the years. Throughout the first pilot year, sharing ad revenue with our 600+ content partners. By the beginning of the second year (growth), we will introduce product placement such as Books and e-learning courses, as requested by our pool of testers (they mainly looked for book recommendations to read through).  By the beginning of the third and fourth year (scale), we will be able to start data mining and pint the MENA region on the big data map. The data will be used for internal purposes only.

Our challenges are three-folds and we have come with precautions:

• Arabic Tech: It is crucial to surround the project with key knowledge partners such as the computing department of major university researching Arabic Language Technologies such as AUB Engineering Department, Stanford NLP Group, QCRI of Hamad Khalifa University, Google MENA.
• Arabic Digital Content on the rise, we will need a pool of assistants to our Chief Content Officer for the searching, outreaching, and managing content partners.
• Although we do not see cash as an aspect limiting our success, we understand that cash is king and need to seek it.

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https://twitter.com/SEJAALApp

https://www.instagram.com/sejaalapp/

Arab populations have suffered terrible times. It is high time that -with the rise of a new generation- we include them in what pertains to them for the sake of helping stabilise an already turmoiled region. Solve MIT has exactly the methodology of inclusion, equality, and the building of the future in the present.

With Sejaal, we want to create massive, recordable, memorable change. A company that is looked up to for its long-lasting innovation and impact. We thrive to build a legacy for generations to come. This is the task of an alliance of various stakeholders, which MIT offers.

We have not signed any agreements yet but we are conversing with the following institutions:

- The American University of Beirut;

- QRCI, Hamad Khalifa University;

- Stanford NLP Group;

- UNESCWA Lebanon;

- Haykal Media

Flipboard.com; Jamhara.com; NabdApp; Tasharuk.net.