Arabic Audio Goodreads: Reedz path to bring English literature to the Middle East
Founded in Tunisia, Reedz is a mobile app with Arabic audio summaries of around 200 English non-fiction bestsellers. Since its launch, the app has been downloaded 90,000 times and has users across UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia.
Just over two years ago, Haithem Kchaou made the decision to launch a Wordpress store to sell second-hand books. It was his love for books that drove him here. He had grown up around books all his life—particularly from his time as a student and volunteer travelling far away from Tunisia to countries like the US, Switzerland, and Serbia.
Only a few months into operations, Haithem’s website was hacked.
While this path got cut short, it would bring him Chehir Dhaouadi—a fellow book lover strong tech background. He had more than eight years of experience having worked with organisations like the Tunisian Entrepreneurship and Spin-Off Association, FivePoints The Talent Pool and Collaboration Capital LLC.
Along with Haithem’s experience with firms like Great Plains Manufacturing, CHIFCO, and Mobioos, in due course of time and conversation, the two decided to combine their skills towards something new. This would shape up to be , which was launched in 2021.
Reedz gives users Arabic summaries of bestselling non-fiction books in under 20 minutes and is akin to the popular reading cataloguing service Goodreads. Since its launch, the app has been downloaded 90,000 times across Android and iOS with about 10% of the total downloads from the UAE and Saudi Arabia with the rest being Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt.
To Haithem and Chehir, the need for an Arabic-led app was strong in MENA countries where English is primarily the third language.
“Many people do not have access to good quality English books and are not fluent in the language. The English bestsellers that Chehir and I have read have changed our lives for the better. We feel that we can help people find a way of living if they are exposed to the vast amount of knowledge that these books carry,” said Haithem.
The company has also bagged a couple of laurels along the way. In January, it won the Al Quoz Creative Entrepreneurship Pitch held in Dubai and bagged a microfund of $3000. The app is also part of two incubators - Mohammed Bin Rashid Innovation Fund, Dubai and Abu-Dhabi-based Ma’an Social Incubator. It has also been a part of NVIDIA Inception Program for AI startups.
“We picked the worst time to launch ourselves in the UAE. While the market need is strong… the rents are skyrocketing especially after Qatar FIFA world cup in 2022, and not to mention a global recession. Thanks to Indian paratha (flatbread) and other Indian food, we were able to cope with all these challenges,” quipped Haithem.
“But on a serious note,” he continued, “We were amazed by the speed of the administration. The UAE, for instance, is decades into the future compared to many North African and Middle Eastern countries like Tunisia. Even the US is lagging behind.”
Reedz App
The Reedz way
All final books available on the Reedz app go through an extensive process. At first, Reedz picks a book that is set to be translated. Once it is picked, it uses artificial intelligence to develop a summary. This summary is then given to an in-house team to translate into Arabic, which is later voiced over by freelancing voice actors.
“The data in AI for Arabic is quite small. So, it's very hard to have a good working model when it comes to directly summarising books from English to Arabic using AI,” said Haithem.
From selection to final production, the process can last about three weeks for summaries that last about 20-25 minutes. “We decided to keep the summaries within 20-25 minutes because no one has the time to listen to ten hours of an audiobook. We are not replacing books, but are becoming the first step before someone decides to buy and read the whole book,” said Haithem.
“We try to include all the main ideas in the summary without being too shallow or revealing too much information,” he added.
At the moment, Reedz works on a freemium model. Users can access one podcast of the book every day. The full library of 200 summarised books is available after users pay a subscription fee that ranges between $2 and $8 monthly.
Options include an annual subscription fee that ranges between $40 to $60. Currently, the retention rate and conversion rate of the app range between 5% and 10%.
What lies ahead?
The focus is on developing the technology further to automate the summarization of books in Arabic directly. It currently has a team of 25 employees, interns and freelancers.
“We are aiming to be on top of the technology, so that once we have more data, we would be the first to fully automate the summarisation process in Arabic,” Haithem says.
Reedz raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-seed round from Flat6Labs Tunisia in 2021. It is now looking to close another pre-seed round by April.
Edited by Akanksha Sarma