Animaat Built a One-Stop Social Media Platform for Pet Parents in MENA

For this installment of NextGen, our series spotlighting emerging entrepreneurs across the region, we turn to Animaat; a Cairo-based startup building what its founders describe as MENA’s first animal-centric social media platform, comprising both community and marketplace, and entirely devoted to pet lovers.

The idea traces back to Anubis, a black Baladi puppy. Partners in life and in business, co-founders Aya Salem and Omar Bebars were first-time pet parents when they began looking for their first dog, eventually choosing a breed often overlooked because of local superstition. For Salem, choosing a black puppy was also a way to challenge the stigma surrounding black animals. He has since become, quite officially, the company's Chief Inspiration Officer.

"Anubis is the reason Animaat exists," says Salem, who also serves as the company’s COO. "Rescuing him changed our lives, and we wanted him to become the face of the brand and help reshape how people view Baladi dogs."

Anubis's adoption exposed a gap the founders couldn't ignore. There was no single place for pet parents in Egypt to find trustworthy products, services, or community. Bebars, Animaat’s CEO, and Salem found themselves piecing together fragmented Facebook groups and a handful of apps to manage basic pet care. In 2021, they began building a platform to bring it all together in one space.

The team behind it remains lean, made up of two part-time developers, one tester, a project-based developer, and a user experience designer, alongside Salem overseeing operations and Bebars supporting across the rest. "We don't see our team members as employees," Bebars says. "We see them as partners on this journey."

To build out the idea, Salem and Babers brought on a shelter owner for firsthand insight into rescue and welfare work, along with technical and financial collaborators. After three years of development, Animaat soft-launched on October 4th, 2024, deliberately timed to coincide with World Animal Welfare Day, before rolling out its official campaigns in August 2025.

Animaat describes itself as an industry-specific social network, similar to what LinkedIn is for professionals or Letterboxd is for film buffs, but built for the pet world. "It's a niche social media platform that also combines commerce and services for pet parents," Salem explains. Users can build profiles for themselves and their pets, tag animals in posts, and preserve memories of pets that have passed. A Missing Pets feature lets the community flag a lost animal's last known location, while Pet-Friendly Spots helps users find restaurants and cafes that welcome animals.

Currently, the platform supports profiles across multiple species, including dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, and rodents, with new additions vetted against welfare guidelines from organizations like PETA before being added.

Having built out the social layer, Animaat is now developing its commercial arm, a marketplace where verified pet businesses can list products, manage inventory, and sell directly to users through in-app checkout, with logistics and delivery handled by the businesses themselves. NGOs will go through a similar verification process, allowing them to raise donations and list animals for adoption.

"It's a highly focused e-commerce platform built exclusively for pet businesses," Bebars explains. "We have a social media platform that's actively serving the marketplace by bringing businesses directly to their target audience."

Growth hasn't come without resistance. Beyond the standard difficulty of asking users to adopt a new social platform, Bebars points to cultural attitudes toward pet ownership and stray animals in Egypt as an ongoing hurdle, one he sees as core to the platform's mission. "We're not just building an entertainment platform," he says. "We're building an educational one."

Looking further out, Bebars describes a 20-year roadmap that extends well beyond pet parenthood. Animaat plans to grow into what it calls a "green social platform," bringing in ethical and cruelty-free businesses whose values naturally overlap with animal welfare. "We didn't build Animaat for a quick exit," he says. "This is a long-term commitment. We want it to become a hub for awareness, ethical businesses, the green economy, and conscious consumers."