Diwanee, the Dubai-based digital media company, has announced its majority acquisition today by Webedia, a Paris-based digital publishing company. While the terms of the deal are undisclosed, rumors place the amount at between $20 million and $50 million, making it one of the largest acquisitions for a digital company in the Middle East to date. It's a natural fit for Diwanee, which has attracted a predominantly female audience of over 5 million monthly unique visitors on its sites, Yasmina.com, a fashion and beauty portal for women, family-oriented site 3a2ilati.com, recipe site AtyabTabkha.com, entertainment portal Wikeez, and fashion e-commerce site Mooda.com. Webedia also targets a primarily female audience, having attracted over 40 million monthly unique visitors to sites that include glamour and fashion portals Purepeople.com and Puretrend.com. Webedia will also invest an additional $5 million USD to help Diwanee expand into new verticals, as CEO and cofounder Hervé Cuviliez, his cofounder and wife Delphine Edde, and their team of over 100 employees continue to lead the platform. While Cuviliez would not confirm the new verticals, Webedia's properties, which have a presence ih France, Brazil, Turkey, Germany and Spain, include sites focusing on home and personal lifestyle, as well as reality TV and television entertainment; any of the above could be extended under new brand names to reach an audience in the Middle East. Diwanee will also benefit from Webedia's big data analysis tools, and its methods for enhancing retargeting, data management, and user profiling, says Cuviliez. "Diwanee was at a point where we could do more on the technology side and data side, but it didn’t make financial sense to do it on our own," says Cuviliez, who founded the site with Edde in 2009. "We were very interested in doing this as part of a much larger group. It was a great synergy, and it’s very exciting." Diwanee, which generates the majority of its revenue from branded content series, will continue to innovate in that space, developing even more sophisticated products, Cuviliez says. Yet, he pledges, Diwanee will continue to focus on what serves the user, and ensure that the content remains educational; branded content pieces typically won't exceed a ratio of 1:20 when compared to regular articles. Guillaume Multrier, co-founder of Webedia, added, “Diwanee has all the elements of a successful player in the digital media space, a solid business model, strong management and a growing market segment. The capital injection is exactly what they needed to realize their potential. For Webedia, thanks to this operation, we are strengthening our position as a leader among digital media companies and continue with the Group's development internationally."
