VC and business accelerator Adaverse announced on Monday its investment of half a million US dollars in the Saudi Web3 company Mithu, which is working on aggregating loyalty programs of Saudi restaurants and stores in a single app, and offering membership and subscription cards in the form of NFTs.
Mithu says that around $100 billion is wasted globally every year in the form of unused and expired loyalty points, due to the difficulty of tracking these programs across different apps and membership cards. The company also says that only 2.5% of Saudi restaurants offer loyalty programs in the first place, meaning that the loyalty program market is still in its infancy in the region.
Mithu’s app uses its own cryptocurrency called Wings ($WINGS), which users can earn by visiting the restaurants available on the app. The currency enables users to obtain features, invitations to events, and special treatment at the restaurants on the app, in addition to buying membership cards in the form of NFTs.
Mithu has already contracted with 200 restaurants in Riyadh. The company aims to focus on small and medium food companies, and help them retain their customers through loyalty programs and gamified experiences. The company was founded by Mohsin Qureshi and Asif Ali, both of whom have experience in the food and startup industries.
It appears that loyalty programs have become one of the prominent use cases of Web3 being explored in the Arab region. According to Taxir’s database, the region has seen the establishment of 6 Web3 companies focused on loyalty programs, including Passport V3 and Sugar Promo in the UAE, TourisToken in Egypt, Tookeez in Morocco, and Wafii in Jordan, in addition to Mithu in Saudi Arabia.
Mithu is the fifth company that Adaverse has invested in since opening its office in Riyadh earlier this year, after previously investing in the Sharia-compliant decentralized finance (DeFi) platform TakaDAO, the blockchain-powered freelance work platform Sorbet, and the NFT company Nuqtah.
