Anghami, a United Arab Emirates-based, corporate-backed music streaming service, has agreed to a reverse takeover with special purpose acquisition company Vistas Media Acquisition Company.
The deal, which is scheduled to be completed in the second half of this year, will give the merged company a post-transaction pro-forma enterprise value of $220m and the place on the Nasdaq Capital Market taken by Vistas when it floated in a $100m initial public offering in August 2020.
Asset manager Shuaa Capital and investment entity Vistas Media Capital have jointly earmarked $40m for a private investment in public equity financing deal that will support the transaction.
Anghami provides an artificial intelligence and machine learning-enhanced Arabic audio entertainment platform with more than 57 million songs and some 70 million users responsible for a total of 1 billion monthly streams. The algorithms allow the software to recommend music to users according to their behaviour.
Asset manager Shuaa Capital invested in Anghami in January 2021, five years after the company raised a similarly undisclosed sum in a series B round led by Samena Capital and backed by telecommunications group Du.
Middle East Venture Partners led a series A round for the company in 2014, investing alongside media group MBC and telecoms firm Mobily subsidiary Mobily Ventures, having also led a seed round of undisclosed size two years before.
Sam Barnet, CEO of MBC, said: “MBC is extremely proud of the exceptional team at Anghami and we are honoured to be a part of a huge success story for the region. The team has been committed to revolutionising the Arabic music industry through innovation and the best product in the market.”
