The Middle East startup landscape is buzzing with breakthrough innovation and creativity. Zendy is proud to play a role in the ecosystem of MENA-based startups and we're thrilled to accept the award for Best Startup - Education at the Middle East Technology Excellence Awards. 

Zendy Co-founder Kamran Kardan recently sat down with Asian Business Review to accept the award and discuss Zendy's mission, vision, and values. 

Kamran commenced the interview by giving a big shoutout to the Zendy team for their tireless commitment to Zendy's mission of providing affordable and accessible academic content to knowledge enthusiasts globally. 

Zendy: knowledge without barriers

In 2019, Zendy embarked on an ambitious journey to offer an alternative model of access to scholarly literature. The traditional pay-per-article model was and still is increasingly unattainable for individuals and researchers, especially in emerging regions where access is already limited. 

Looking at the success of the subscription market, namely products like Netflix and Spotify, Zendy founders thought why not offer the same experience for users to discover academic literature? Thus, Zendy was born. Zendy is an affordable academic library that offers unlimited access to journals, articles, e-books, proceedings, and more for the monthly price of a single research paper. 

With Zendy, students, researchers, and professionals can read, cite, and download leading research. The added benefit of Zendy is saving money, traditional models of access force individuals to pay between $15 - $40 per research paper. 

What does the future of academic access look like?

When asked about the future of Zendy and what's next, Kamran Kardan spoke of Zendy mission which is to continue to reduce inequalities of access to knowledge. As a firm supporter of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Zendy (a product of Knowledge E), is working hard to reach new emerging regions. 

To strengthen its mission of creating a global knowledge economy without barriers, in October 2021, Zendy launched its free Open Access platform. Zendy Open features over 43 million free Open Access publications on one easy-to-use platform. 

With the support of leading publishers, Zendy's growth is a collaborative effort, and the next 12 months will be defining for the company. In September 2022, Zendy launched in Nigeria and has since acquired over 7,000 from the booming African region. 

"We're grateful to be recognised as a leading EduTech Startup in MENA and we're inspired by the many other innovators in the industry who are using technology to make a positive impact in communities globally. The team is currently working on significant updates to the Zendy experience and we're so excited to launch new features in Q1 2023. Day by day we inch closer to our mission of creating a world where everyone, everywhere can access knowledge without barriers," said Zendy Co-founder Kamran Kardan. 

Click here to watch the full interview: https://bit.ly/3PcgxPB