• Egypt-based life science venture Nawah Scientific has expanded to Jordan as it prepares for its Series A round. 
• In January, Nawah Scientific raised $1 million in a mix of equity and debt in a second pre-Series A round led by Egypt Ventures, with participation from Alexandria Fund (AF), Cairo Angels, Alex Angels, HULT Alumni Angels along with international angel investors. 
• Founded in 2015 by Omar Sakr, Nawah aims to empower scientific research and scientists by enabling them to carry out higher quality research regardless of their location. After receiving requests through Nawah's digital platform, Nawah's in-house scientists carry out the required tests and then return the lab results online.

Press release

Nawah Scientific, Egypt’s fastest-growing life science venture, has announced today the soft launch of its business in Jordan.

“With a very vibrant and strong scientific ecosystem, Jordan was the must-go option for Nawah” Nawah’s founder Dr. Omar Sakr commented. “Despite the relatively smaller size of Jordan to other MENA countries, Jordanian scientists are way ahead of others on so many fronts, and Jordanian universities are the cornerstone behind this significant impact. Yet, there is much more to achieve and Nawah is coming to Jordan to help make this happen.” This is not Nawah's first time doing business in Jordan. In fact, collaboration with Jordanian universities and scientists has been established since 2018 remotely through Nawah's hub in Cairo.

With a clear mission to “Empower Science in MENA & Africa”, Nawah has introduced a brand-new business model to the region, bringing the power of the digital era to the capable hands of scientists.“Scientists' role is to think, design the experiments, and interpret results, we do the rest of technical work for them at Nawah” commented Prof. Ali El-Halawany, Chief Scientific Officer at Nawah.

Here is how it works: Nawah's online platform receives experiments requests, a courier collects samples for analysis, Nawah's scientists carry needed tests and return results online.  By this, Nawah enables scientists to do higher-quality research regardless of their location and owned lab facilities. Several industries are direct beneficiaries of Nawah services. In the last couple of years, Nawah has become an integral part of the Pharma industry in Egypt with hundreds of samples flowing for analysis, routine checks, or formulations requiring improvement by Nawah pharmaceutical formulation team. The food industry comes second with a massive need for analysis of ingredients as well as the growing need for ensuring food safety.

Nawah plans to extend its scope of services to the agriculture, chemical, and oil industries in the foreseeable future.  Earlier this year, Nawah has announced closing another 1M USD pre-series A round with the inauguration of its new hub of labs, which was described as “The biggest private multidisciplinary research hub in Egypt”. In a recent media interview, Dr. Omar Sakr has announced that Nawah is working on a record Series A investment round, that is the biggest for a life science venture in the region, with decent traction from international VC funds.