Sawerly, an online platform which brings together talented photographers under one roof announced that it received a seed fund back in December 2014 for 800,000 SAR , or around 211,000 USD by QB Co, an angel investor part of Oqal Angel Investment network. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise given Sawerly’s many successes in startup competitions this past year – which are common attraction points for investors.

They started as an idea at Startup Weekend Jeddah 2013, that later got accelerated by Flat6Labs Jeddah (Qotuf al Riyadah), and proceeded to win the MENA-wide Ideathon Competition by Arabnet Riyadh 2013, the National Championship “Get in the Ring” international competition hosted by STC, and later 1st place in the Start-up demo Competition in Riyadh 2014.

Sawerly will now be looking to spend the investment to fully redevelop and redesign the website and app for improved user experience. Hussein Attar, CEO of Sawerly told ArabNet “the current product is only a minimal viable product used to prove the concept; we plan to have the full launch around summer time.” They will very likely look to tap into new markets within the next couple of years, namely in the UAE and Egypt.

While Sawerly services include booking a photographer for a session on an individual scale, they also offer a corporate channel; where companies can deal with Sawerly directly by mediating the services of some of the most talented photographers in the business, and acting as a convenient intermediary that takes care of the headaches of choosing and booking.
They will be adding a new feature called “photo stock”, which will allow photographers to sell their photos on the website – and a premium program that lets photographers host their own subdomains on Sawerly, as well as a larger portfolio capacity, and the ability to be directly booked instead of going through bidding.

Sawerly have been all over the startup competition scene, and their journey has only begun. We’ll be expecting to hear bigger news from this team of talented and dedicated entrepreneurs in the future.

Hussein Attar, CEO of Sawerly, Hussein Attar, was recently chosen by Forbes Middle East as one of Top 100 Entrepreneurs Shaping Saudi Arabia’s Future, Entrepreneurial Elite in technology for his work in Sawerly.

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