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Tech & Business

7.5.2018

Big data: an Arab start-up to conquer the global market

Probe and analyze the Net and social media to enable companies to make strategic decisions is Lucidya’s purpose. This Saudi start-up has been created in Jeddah by three young visionaries. Today, Lucidya is a leader in the Middle East and North Africa region, and aspires to win its place in Western markets.

Behind his geeky glasses and his timid smile, Abdullah Assiri displays daring ambitions intending to “ to expand money to work; and also to showcase Lucidya to the French people“. Lucidya is the name of the start-up he founded in 2015 with two other partners. The thirty-year-old man presented Lucidya last May at the Viva Tech, the Parisian fair focusing on new techs and innovations. On the cobblestones of rue Montorgueil, in the 2nd district of Paris, the young man evokes, enthusiastically, his successes, his aspirations and the stakes of the “big data”, as the sector is colloquially called.

200 million sites combed

The “data” are precisely what Lucidya is based on. The agency probes and analyzes 200 million sites, including social networks Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Youtube to highlight the emotions hidden behind the billions of publications. It then gives brands a better understanding of their consumers and their uses. In short, Lucidya is “ the voice of the consumers heard by brands,” as its founder explains so well.

How does it work? Digging into Lucidya’s apparatus would be hazardous, since its workings are very sophisticated… To keep it simple, the system uses “ concept codes, artificial intelligence and machine learning to be able to abstract the emotions of people writing the posts“.

Data in Arabic : an exclusive market

The startup has already made headlines at the MENA Business Forum, an economic forum focused on the Middle East and North Africa region, held in Berlin last April. Lucidya had made a big splash by appearing among the two start-up finalists in a competition facing more than ten young companies specialized in new technologies.

This success echoes the leading position that the company has already won in the regional market, where there are almost no competitors. Lucidya owes this status to its strategic positioning on data in Arabic. “ So with Lucidya, the single difference from other companies is that we focus right now on Arabic language,” says Abdullah. “Arabic language is very unique, is very difficult actually to understand”. Understanding that most social network analysis software aren’t relevant or simply don’t work with Arabic contents, let alone Arabic dialects, the start-up has been able to anticipate the dynamics at work in the region and seize opportunities to become a pioneering market figure.

Lucidya team members

Lucidya team members

Next step for Lucidya: to conquer the world

Today, Abdullah and his associates are aiming bigger and are trying their luck on the global market. “ What our next goal is, now we’ve calculated, managed and mastered Arabic language and now our chance is to go beyond Arabic language,” Abdullah dares. And that’s why I’m here also in Paris to see the possibilities, maybe to extend to French language and other languages “.

The global Big Data market is exploding. It jumped from $ 28 billion in 2016 to nearly $ 35 billion in 2017, and forecasts continue to rise. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region alone accounts for about 4.5% of the market, a figure that is growing and that must certainly please Abdullah and his company.

See also

Nadeem Bakhsh : “We are building the most incredible project right now”

Published on 5 July 2018