Q&A with Yahki the social storytelling platform (1 of 2)

yahki logo

yahki logo

What is Yahki?

Yahki is a multilingual, social storytelling platform, that gives you all you will need to tell your everyday stories using your best and loved findings of images, videos, articles and posts from all over the web. This helps you frame your thoughts about things you have seen, experienced or just crossed your mind or life.

How Does Yahki work?


Why did Yahki start?

It is likely that storytelling has been around as long as human existed. Storytelling is what makes us human. Storytelling fulfills the need for human beings to cast their experiences in a narrative form, and that is a huge opportunity.

We wanted to give our users a great tool that helps them easily express their thoughts in a multi-dimensional perspective.  This tool would be there for them no matter what they want to say; inform, persuade, motivate or entertain.  Yahki is that awesome tool

Where is Yahki based? And to which markets does it cater?

Yahki is a product of  Tayait, a Cairo based research lab which was founded in 2006 with the mission of creating digital media technologies that focus on the Arab user and cater for his needs.

When was Yahki launched?

Yahki was launched as closed alpha version end of 2010 where it was available for a select number of Arab users from Egypt and the Gulf.    It started a closed beta by invitation by mid 2011.  It opened as a public beta (soft launch)  in September 2011 and and is planned to be oficially announce during ArabNet Digital Summit 2012

How many employees does Yahki have?

Yahki has no fixed number of employees, thus the team focusing on the development consists of 10 full time engineers and designers covering all aspects of development and design .

Who are the key players at Yahki?

Tayait was founded by Mr. Wafik Shamma an Arab visionary angel investor and is led by Mr. Ashraf Tawakkol – a serial entrepreneur – as the CEO.

How does Yahki generate revenue?

Yahki is based on a multi-sided Freemium business model.  It’s basic services and features are provided free to all it’s users. Power users will be able to obtain Premium and extra feature for a reasonable and affordable monthly subscription.  Based on the interactions of the network effect, other parts of the platform are targeted at businesses and organizations.  That said, as we are officially launching Yahki during ArabNet Digital Summit this year, we are only focusing on the basic and free services.  Premium features and advertising will follow later this year.

Stay tuned to part two of this article where we get a chance to see how things work and what advice Yahki has to offer to all startups from the MENA region. Or stay updated with all news from interactive ME by registering to receive our newsletter.

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Having worked with top digital agencies and companies in the MENA region for the past number of years I'm now looking now to venture on my own with small side projects in online, SaaS products. Things I like include: gaming, sports, technology, social media, start ups, funny things and reading about new bright ideas.

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