Saudi Arabia-Based Declic Cashes In US$1 Million Seed Round

Saudi Arabia-based social networking startup Declic has raised US$1 million in a seed funding round led by Dubai-based digital media company VidMatic Digital DMCC with the company looking to scale its platform across the region and deepen its product capabilities. 

Founded by Alice Othmani, Pritesh Prajapati, and Paul K., in KSA in 2024, Declic is a mobile-first social networking platform built around real-world and virtual experiences. The platform brings together event discovery, ticketing, and community-building tools in a single product, addressing the fragmented ways individuals, organizers, and local businesses currently coordinate social activities. Artificial intelligence (AI) sits at the core of the platform, shaping how users discover events and how organizers engage communities over time. 

Speaking to Inc. Arabia, Declic co-founder Alice Othmani explained the underlying focus guiding the company’s development. “Our mission is to simplify social outings discovery, creation, and monetization for individuals, organizers, and local businesses—turning offline experiences into engaged communities,” she said. That focus, Othmani noted, emerged from close observation of how existing platforms function and where they fall short. “While social and community tech is crowded globally, there is a clear structural gap between digital social platforms and real-world connection," she said. "Most platforms optimize for content, followers, or messaging—but very few are designed to consistently move people from online discovery to offline experiences. Social outings like dining, camping, workshops, or small group activities are still fragmented across WhatsApp groups, Instagram pages, and manual coordination. Declic was built to bridge that gap by making local, real-life experiences the center of the social graph."

Choosing to build Declic from Saudi Arabia was a deliberate extension of that thesis. “Saudi Arabia is the right moment and market, because real-world social activity is rapidly expanding, but the infrastructure to organize it hasn’t caught up," Othmani pointed out. "Lifestyle diversification, a young digital-native population, and a growing culture of experiences have created strong demand for curated social outings. At the same time, organizers and local businesses lack simple tools to activate communities beyond one-off events."

According to Othmani, the same momentum is playing out across the GCC, where a young, digitally fluent population is reshaping how social life is formed and sustained beyond traditional settings. “What makes Saudi Arabia and the broader GCC unique is the combination of high mobile engagement, strong spending power, and a preference for group-based, interest-driven activities," she said. "Communities here form around experiences—food, outdoor activities, learning, wellness—and Declic aligns naturally with how people already socialize, while giving structure, visibility, and scale to those connections.” 

As Declic began to take shape, external interest followed once the team could demonstrate progress on the ground. “Beyond capital, investors were convinced by the clarity of the problem we’re solving and our early market validation," Othmani said. "We demonstrated strong demand for a unified platform that combines event discovery, ticketing, and social connection—especially for underserved small organizers and local communities. Before approaching investors, we focused on key milestones: launching a functional product, validating product–market fit through early user adoption, onboarding organizers, generating initial revenues, and proving repeat usage. These signals showed not just traction, but a scalable model and a team capable of executing in a large, fragmented market.” 

With fresh capital in place, Declic is now applying a defined framework to where and how it grows next. “Before entering a new market, we look for three key signals: a strong culture of social outings and local experiences, high mobile and social media adoption, and a fragmented event ecosystem where organizers rely heavily on informal tools like WhatsApp and Instagram," Othmani revealed. "We also assess the presence of small to mid-sized organizers and local businesses that would benefit from a unified discovery, ticketing, and community platform. We prioritize markets where offline social behavior is already strong, but digital infrastructure for organizing and monetizing those experiences is still immature. This allows Declic to add immediate value without needing to create new habits.” 

That approach is already reflected in Declic’s current operations. “Today, Declic is already operating across Tunisia, Morocco, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, which gives us strong cross-market insights into MENA user behavior," Othmani noted. "Our next expansion focus is on GCC and select North African markets with similar demographics, high urban density, and growing experience-led economies, allowing us to scale efficiently while maintaining local relevance." 

As for the road ahead, Declic’s approach to product development is closely linked to how technologies such as AI can recalibrate digital social behavior.  “We see AI shifting social networking away from attention-based feeds toward relevance-driven, real-world connection," Othmani predicted. "Instead of optimizing for likes or followers, AI will increasingly help people discover experiences, communities, and people that genuinely match their interests, availability, and social intent. At Declic, AI already plays a practical role through recommendation systems and matching algorithms that surface the right social outings—dining, camping, workshops, or small group activities—based on user behavior and local context. This reduces friction and helps people move from passive browsing to active participation.” 

For those running activities on the Declic platform, Othmani noted that the same tools will serve a different function over time. “For organizers and communities, AI becomes an intelligence layer rather than just automation," she explained. "Our analytics tools help organizers understand demand, optimize pricing and timing, identify repeat participants, and build stronger communities over time—not just run one-off events. In the Middle East, AI has an especially strong impact because communities are highly interest- and group-driven, and users expect personalized, mobile-first experiences. AI enables platforms like Declic to scale personalization across cities and cultures while respecting local behaviors, making community building more intentional, inclusive, and sustainable."

Pictured in the lead image is Declic co-founder Alice Othmani. Image courtesy Declic.