Page 33 - UNIFONIC PR REPORT - July 2024_Neat

7/25/24, 2:22 PM Saudi Unicorns: KSA-Based Unifonic Is Offering A One-Stop-Solution For Businesses To Digitally Communicate With Diverse Custo…
Ahmed Hamdan, is the co-founder and CEO of Unifonic, a conversational AI platform.

This article is part of a series covering enterprises that have been a part of the Saudi
Unicorns Program, a national program by the Ministry of Communications and Information

Technology (MCIT), National Technology Development Program (NTDP), and

the Mohammed bin Salman Foundation (Misk), to enable and nurture successful and

established tech companies to reach unicorn status in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The need to create customer engagement platforms that facilitate conversations across
multiple channels was born largely due to the shift from brick-and-mortar retail outlets to

online and hybrid options. In fact, multiple reports suggest that the term "omnichannel" was

introduced to -and gained momentum in- the marketing world only in 2010. However, four
years before that, in 2006, Ahmed Hamdan, founder and CEO of cloud-based B2B

customer engagement platform Unifonic, had already begun to scratch the surface of this

concept. "In 2006, the Middle East faced significant limitations in mobile internet

connectivity and access to social media platforms," Hamdan recalls. "Traditional short

message service (SMS) was the primary mode of communication, as even Blackberry
Messenger had restrictions on the number of people an individual could message at a

time. To address this communication gap, we developed Resalaty, a website enabling

users to upload numerous contacts and simultaneously message them. However, we were
university students who needed more business sense, financial plans, and a startup

ecosystem to guide us. Despite these challenges, our platform gained traction and

eventually rebranded to Unifonic. Today, Unifonic provides conversational artificial

intelligence (AI) solutions, including SMS, WhatsApp, voice, chatbot solutions, and mobile
push notifications to a diverse and extensive customer base."

Designed as a conversational AI platform and software as a service (SaaS) provider,

Unifonic focuses specifically on customer engagement and communication. "Unifonic

enables businesses to automate customer support, marketing, and other operations,
further eliminating operational setbacks," Hamdan adds. "Unifonic's platform has been

designed to cater to a wide range of clients, from large banks to on-demand service apps.

The company's business model centers on providing a single, integrated platform allowing

businesses to communicate with their customers through their preferred channels without
coding. This is achieved by leveraging programmable application programming interfaces

https://www.entrepreneur.com/en-ae/growth-strategies/heres-how-ksa-based-unifonic-is-offering-a/476628 2/4