Wrappup secures $800,000 in funding led by BECO Capital,
an app that uses smart voice recording to create meeting minutes in seconds
Dubai, September 18, 2016 – BECO Capital, a regional venture capital firm focused on technology investments in MENA (Middle East and North Africa), today announced that it has invested in Wrappup, a Dubai-based technology company that uses intelligent voice recording to summarize meetings and make speech searchable. The round closed after raising $800,000.
Wrappup is an app that aims to solve the challenges presented by inefficient meetings and improve productivity for teams. During recording, users flag important moments instead of scribbling down notes. These moments can be tagged as actions or decisions, and participants can add quick notes for easy reference. Multiple team members can participate in the recording sessions and partake in the experience. Wrappup compiles these moments into a playable minutes-of-meeting, creating a highlight reel of the discussion, shared with teams on the cloud. After the meeting, participants can play back their highlights, and quickly send out summaries. They can even search through the speech, as Wrappup pinpoints ‘keywords” to the exact moments where those words were spoken.
Amir Farha, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of BECO Capital, says:
“We are very excited to have invested in Wrappup. The team has a great pedigree and determination to succeed in building a transformational product on a global scale. We decided to lead the seed round and support the company as they bring their product to market in the coming months. The interest garnered by various large and small businesses for Wrappup has demonstrated a need that they intend to fill. Voice technology is an area that is experiencing rapid innovation with many use cases that can be disrupted by this development. Meeting management is one of them, and we believe that with time, voice-related technology applications will create many more efficiencies in the workplace.”
Amir added: “Wrappup is a great example of an excellent and well-rounded team from the MENA region, identifying and creating a solution that has global applications. The team have a long journey ahead of them and we’re here to support them throughout.”
Rami Salman, founder and CEO, Wrappup, says: “An investment from BECO is more than just a stamp of approval on Wrappup, it’s confirmation that Dubai can be a launching pad for exporting innovation. Wrappup is a brand new approach to solving the unproductive meeting space. We are building a powerful product that helps employees easily access useful information from their meeting discussions. This is tech heavy, and it takes time. BECO’s investment ensures we have the resources and reach to fully realize our potential.”
Other investors in this round include: 500 Startups, Arzan VC, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Hala Fadel, Dubai Angel Investors, Odin Financial Advisors, and WOMENA.
Rami adds: “$37B dollars is wasted annually on unproductive meetings in the US alone[1]. Teams use minutes of meeting to help productivity, but sharing minutes is a tedious and archaic job. Wrappup solves this by using what we call smart voice recording, surfacing actionable business data through an easy to use app. We’re excited to improve people’s work lives.”
Ayush Chordia, co-founder, Wrappup, says: “Wrappup is changing the landscape of the meeting space and redefining how people interact and engage in meeting discussions. BECO’s investment will help us make our vision a reality in every meeting room, replacing traditional notepads with smartphones. With their lead, we were able to get a distinguished set of co-investors that would be able supporters for us in this journey.”
Ayush adds: “Converting speech into useful data is at the core of each of Wrappup’s technical innovations. The Speech Search enables anyone to remember anything using a simple search interface. The Speaker Recognition algorithm uses machine learning to identify different speakers based on their voice patterns and segment meeting discussion. Wrappup then builds quantifiable metrics around the productivity of your speech.”
Converting speech into useful data is at the core of each of Wrappup’s technical innovations. The Speech Search enables anyone to remember anything using a simple search interface. The Speaker Recognition algorithm uses machine learning to identify different speakers based on their voice patterns and segment meeting discussion. Wrappup then builds quantifiable metrics around the productivity of your speech. Are you talking up all the discussion? How often are you leading to actions or decisions?
Wrappup is currently launching their Private Beta Program, and accepting applications for teams or individuals who want early access.
“The demand for Wrappup has been overwhelming. The Wrappup platform has already been used in meeting rooms, classrooms, and even conferences. We are looking to deploy Wrappup as a platform fit for multiple purposes and scale to the various use cases by plugging into existing ecosystems such as Slack, Microsoft Office and Salesforce plugins for enterprise,” says Rami.
“Wrappup is designed as a consumer-oriented enterprise product that is super easy to use. We believe that the average employee is now at the centre of making enterprise software decisions, not the executives. Millennials are downloading apps every day to help improve their lives and millennial employees now expect the same of workplace apps. ”
Enterprise Social Software is quickly replacing outdated enterprise software to create workplaces that are more productive. The market was estimated at $4.8B in 2014 and expected to reach $8.2 B by 2019[2]. Wrappup will look to capture market share in this disruptive market, representing a great opportunity for Wrappup and BECO Capital to lead this growth.
The investment marks BECO Capital’s tenth in MENA.
About Wrappup
Wrappup was founded by Rami Salman and co-founded by Ayush Chordia and Rishav Jalan. The company began by building working prototype in under 24 hours, winning Angelhack Dubai 2015.
Through 4 years at Bain & Company, Rami experienced the power of productive meetings with clients across industries. He is designing the app based on accumulated best practice and extensive research on meeting productivity. Ayush has built the multi-platform cloud based app and unleashed the power of speech and voice-print recognition technology to enhance the experience. Rishav has built the Android app to be intuitive, quick, and scalable. Both have developed at breakneck speed, the engine for the tech growth. The team is still growing, and on the lookout for hiring talented engineers.
For more information about Wrappup, please visit www.wrappup.co
About BECO Capital
BECO Capital is a Venture Capital firm with a thoughtful approach to investing, providing early stage growth capital and hands-on operational support for innovative technology companies in the MENA region. BECO seeks companies that meet a specific set of criteria: an extraordinary management team, the intention and ability to scale, a transformational value proposition and sound marketplace defensibility.
Founded in 2012, BECO Capital is led by a team that enjoys a solid and diverse track record across the venture capital, technology, entrepreneurial and financial sectors. The Firm is a hands-on partner that assists its portfolio companies to expand to new markets across the region, acquire key talent, implement operational improvements, adopt corporate governance practices and raise growth funds. BECO Capital also offers follow-on funding to its portfolio companies and helps line-up large regional investors and global Venture Capital firms for the future much larger follow-on fundraising rounds.
For more information, please visit www.becocapital.com. BECO Capital tweets @BECOCapital
For media enquiries and requests to interview our partners, please contact:
Serene Touma
Marketing and Comms Director, BECO Capital
Website: www.BECOCapital.com
Email: serene.touma@becocapital.com
Telephone: +971 4 3687811
Mobile: +971 50 459 6377
[1] “You waste a lot of time at work”, Atlassian, https://www.atlassian.com/time-wasting-at-work-infographic
[2] “Enterprise Social Software (ESS) Market (On Premise, On Demand, Social Collaboration, Enterprise Social Networks) – Global Advancements, Demand Analysis & Worldwide Market Forecasts (2014 – 2019)”, May 2014, http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/enterprise-social-software.asp