Ras2Ras Social Rating Platform Acquired By Qatari Investor
Ras2Ras, the Yemen-based online social rating and comparison platform, that was previously covered here, has been acquired by Qatari investor Ahmed Alaji.
Ras2Ras, which was founded by Amad Almsaodi in 2008, was built around a very simple yet really interesting idea: putting any two comparable things against each other, and letting people vote on which they like best.
Now, even though the tool’s idea is very simple in principle, it could be used for a number of research and user engagement purposes by businesses, with the potential to be a source of some really interesting and useful insights and information.
Many people believed in the potential of the platform from the day it was launched, however there wasn’t much focus on it from the founder, who had another big project on his mind, AqarMap (a regional real estate marketplace), and so it didn’t grow as it could have to meet its true potential.
So this acquisition is definitely a really good thing for the product as it seems Ahmed Alaji, who initially was just looking at the site for advertising purposes, came to see the underlying opportunities the platform offers and is now interested in growing it to its full potential and making it a profit generating service.
As for Amad Almsaodi, who is fresh out of a third place win in the MIT Arab Business Plan Competition for his project Arabic Coach, well the deal couldn’t have come at a sweeter time, he now doesn’t have to worry about maintaining Ras2Ras anymore and can focus all his attention on growing AqarMap.
We’ll be keeping an eye on how things go with Ras2Ras and what new developments happen with the platform, and will make sure to bring you any interesting updates on that front.
Congratulation for Amad and His team
No offense but it's really a stupid website and don't deserve this coverage
how much was the acquisition ?
As has become custom with deals of this kind in the region (for some unknown reason), the amount was not disclosed.
I don't expect it to be a very big amount though as there hasn't been much sustained effort/development put into the product since its launch in 2008, and I don't think it got to a level where it was very mature or generating profit.
None taken; but you also have to accept that there's an opposite opinion that many people have in thinking that this is a really interesting product if taken care of and managed well.
Congrats to Amad even if it was sold for small amount of money and not disclosed, this reflects his entrepreneurship in doing something demanded and at least someone is interested to buy.
Tarek Kassar
I totally agree. We need more people who actually go out and build stuff that works.
Stupid or not they made money , many startups their goal is to be sold at some point exp cant recall names but a German company copies every catchy thing in IT field that bloomed in USA and tries to do the same version ( same business model ) in Europe and in the hope to be sold at some point they recently sold CityDeal to Groupon for 100 M€ 🙂 i wish i can do the same 🙂 🙂
the Idea is nice, but there is huge room for improvement. as a researcher the result are not satisfying as it should collect more data of the raters like: age, sex, nationality ..etc. or the ratting should be based on specific aspect like iphone speed vs. ipad speed, or iphone price vs. iphone price.. etc. you just need to compare apple to apple not apple for orange!
That would be the case if we had an online/web industry that was broken n' substandard, which is not the case. I was on the haters side too, simple argument, what was sold that was valuable? Technology? No, as the site is really an immature work, Brand & Reach? No, dead obvious, so then is it the Team? No, there's no team. Visitors n' Loyal users? Not that obvious. So what was exactly sold over here? A domain name & a half-assed web-app?
Now let's stop the compliments and limiting ourselves in here, the reason i'm gonna' be a hater on this is cuz simply the industry is a lot better than what such an acquisition makes it look like. But still, kudos to Amad for his MIT achievement…
We’ll congrats but like as most comments say. It still needs improvement in terms of research and video proofs and etc. Though congratulations for a well done job!