Business & Money | Tuesday 13 January, 2015 1:32 pm |

A 1 Billion Riyal Market with an average of more than 200,000 requests a year only in Saudi, the photography industry was considered an untapped market until last year. Sawerly, an innovative Saudi start-up, had the sole purpose to open our eyes to the photographer market. A once unstandardized, unclear, haphazard market has been translated into services, prices, and profiles that you can easily select and book.

Sawerly, that started late 2013 was founded by three young bright minded individuals, Hussein Attar, Mohammed Alzahrani, and Bassam AlSaif. Although studying abroad and presented with several job offers when coming back to Saudi, the 3 co-founders decided to take the path that many before them were reluctant to take, fearing the challenges and unstructured system, into entrepreneurship.

Starting as an idea in Startup Weekend Jeddah, a startup competition dedicated to generate ideas and startups across the world. Sawerly continued after that to be part of Flat6Labs Jeddah accelerators that is run by Qotuf al Riyadah. Provided with funding, offices space, mentors and training sessions, Sawerly was able to transform the simple idea into a company with legal structure and an minimal viable product ready to be tested into the market.

Sawerly went on to win several awards in the kingdom like Arabnet Ideathon 2013 and startup 2014 competitions in Riyadh, and it was the national champion of Get in the Ring international competition which was hosted by STC. Sawerly was also selected as semifinalists in MIT Entrepreneurship form Arab Region

Competition, Webit Congress and MENA Angel Investor Group. In addition, Sawerly’s CEO, Hussein Attar was recently chosen by Forbes Middle East as one of Top 100 Entrepreneurs Shaping Saudi Arabia's Future, Entrepreneurial Elite in technology for his work in Sawerly.

Sawerly is an online platform which brings together a diverse range of talented photographers under one roof. There are over 500 photographers, male and female, available for photo-shoots photography and video of different categories. From corporate to personal memory capturing Sawerly caters all. Using Sawerly is as easy as 1,2,3 serving all around the kingdom.

Recently, Sawerly closed a round of investment of 800,000 SR by QB Co. a member of OQAL Angel Investors group Jeddah branch. The investment will be spent to redevelop and redesign the website and mobile application to improve customer experience, and expand abroad to other countries in the MENA Region. Sawerly plans to be a global brand and disrupt the photography industry worldwide, while providing job opportunities for thousands of utilized talented photographers.