Hakini

Cover Block

Field	Value
Name	Hakini
Tagline	Online therapy platform increasing accessibility to mental health care in the Arab world
Headquarters	Ramallah, Palestine
Founded	2019
Stage	Seed
Business Model	Marketplace
Industry	Healthtech
Technology Type	AI / Machine Learning
Geography	Middle East / North Africa
Growth Profile	Venture Scale
Funding Label	Undisclosed

Links

• Website: https://www.hakini.net/en
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/hakini

The Short Version

Hakini is an Arabic-language teletherapy marketplace founded in 2019 in Ramallah that connects users across Palestine and the broader Arabic-speaking diaspora with licensed therapists, supplemented by self-help interventions and AI-assisted guidance [CB Insights] [LinkedIn]. The company is positioned as the first Palestinian startup dedicated specifically to mental health and wellbeing [LinkedIn] [ReliefWeb]. Co-founders Majd Manadre and Sondos Mleitat built the platform after the COVID-19 era surfaced acute demand for confidential, remote care, and the company reports that its user base skews toward women and teenagers aged 18 to 45 [The National, Nov 2021]. Hakini was selected into Village Capital's Sustainability MENA 2021 cohort, and its only publicly disclosed financing event is an accelerator-stage round dated June 2021 [Wamda, Oct 2021] [CB Insights]. The product combines marketplace dynamics with content distribution and lightweight digital therapeutics, and reaches users in the UAE, Jordan, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States [The National, Nov 2021]. Over the next 12 to 18 months, the questions worth tracking are whether Hakini can convert reported reach into paying retention, whether it can raise institutional capital beyond accelerator support, and how the macro environment in Palestine affects its operating base [ReliefWeb] [Forbes, Oct 2023].

Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by CB Insights, The National, Wamda, and LinkedIn.

Taxonomy Snapshot

Axis	Value
Stage	Seed
Business Model	Marketplace
Industry / Vertical	Healthtech (Mental Health)
Technology Type	AI / Machine Learning, Teletherapy
Geography	MENA, with Arabic diaspora reach
Growth Profile	Venture Scale
Funding	Undisclosed accelerator round (June 2021)

The Company in Brief

Hakini, whose name translates loosely from Arabic as "talk to me," was founded in 2019 in Ramallah by Majd Manadre and Sondos Mleitat with the goal of building the first Palestinian startup devoted to mental health and wellbeing [LinkedIn] [PitchBook]. The founding thesis was that clinical mental health capacity in Palestine is thin, social stigma keeps many potential patients out of brick-and-mortar clinics, and Arabic-speaking users in both the home market and the diaspora have few culturally-fluent digital alternatives. The company set out to address these constraints with a single online channel that combined therapist matching, confidential teletherapy, and a library of self-help content [CB Insights].

Hakini was among the teams that emerged from a regional hackathon convened to surface health, education, and work-life solutions for Palestinians during the pandemic [Mercy Corps]. By October 2021, Village Capital named Hakini as one of four MENA startups receiving investment through its Sustainability MENA 2021 cohort [Wamda, Oct 2021] [Village Capital]. CB Insights records the company's most recent disclosed financing event as an Incubator/Accelerator round closed June 30, 2021 [CB Insights].

Since that milestone, Hakini has continued to operate from Ramallah while serving a geographically distributed user base. The National reported in late 2021 that the platform's clients are mainly in Palestine but also include Arabic speakers in the UAE, Jordan, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States, with users typically aged 18 to 45 and skewing female [The National, Nov 2021]. Subsequent regional coverage has highlighted the broader headwinds facing Palestinian startups, including the disruption to the ecosystem documented by Forbes in October 2023 [Forbes, Oct 2023].

Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by The National, Wamda, CB Insights, and PitchBook.

What They Have Built

Hakini's core product is a web-based Arabic-language platform that connects users with vetted therapists for confidential one-on-one sessions, supplemented with self-guided exercises and AI-assisted guidance [CB Insights] [LinkedIn]. The company describes its offering as combining guidance for self-help intervention, teletherapy, and AI to increase accessibility to mental health care in the Arab world [LinkedIn]. The marketplace logic is the same two-sided model familiar from global telehealth peers: therapists list availability and credentials, users browse and book, and the platform handles scheduling, payments, and the secure video layer.

What distinguishes the product is the combination of Arabic-first design, regional clinical sourcing, and a content layer aimed at destigmatizing mental health conversations [LinkedIn] [ReliefWeb]. The company has reportedly served thousands of users with content reach in the hundreds of thousands [LinkedIn] [ReliefWeb]. The specific role of AI in the product is described in general terms in cited sources without published technical detail on model selection, training data, or clinical validation [LinkedIn].

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Product description corroborated by CB Insights and LinkedIn; technical detail not publicly disclosed.

Market Research and Opportunity

Mental health in the Arab world sits at the intersection of rising acknowledged need, thin clinical supply, and a digital distribution layer that is finally mature enough to bridge the gap. Demand drivers cited in regional coverage include pandemic-era normalization of teletherapy, a young and digitally native population across MENA, and the slow erosion of stigma [The National, Nov 2021] [LinkedIn]. The supply side remains constrained: Arabic-speaking, culturally-fluent therapists are scarce relative to population, and clinic-based care is concentrated in major urban centers.

Hakini's reach across Palestine, the Gulf, Europe, and the United States indicates that the addressable user base is the Arabic-speaking population globally [The National, Nov 2021]. That diaspora dimension is meaningful because purchasing power in Arabic-speaking communities in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States is materially higher than in the home market, which can subsidize lower-priced access in Palestine and other price-sensitive geographies.

Cited reach signal	Figure
Users served	Thousands
Palestinians supported	Hundreds
Content reach	Hundreds of thousands

Regulatory and macro forces cut both ways. On the supportive side, MENA governments have generally welcomed digital health pilots, and cross-border teletherapy for the diaspora sits in a relatively permissive regulatory zone. On the risk side, the operating environment in Palestine has been disrupted by the events Forbes documented in October 2023 [Forbes, Oct 2023].

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Reach figures from single sources (LinkedIn, ReliefWeb); macro context confirmed by Forbes and The National.

Who Else Is Fighting for This

Hakini competes in a small but active set of Arabic-language mental health platforms, with differentiation resting primarily on geographic origin, therapist network depth, and the breadth of self-help content.

Company	Positioning	Notable Differentiator
Hakini	Arabic teletherapy marketplace, Palestine-founded	First Palestinian mental health startup; diaspora reach
Shezlong	Arabic teletherapy, Egypt-founded	Earliest mover in Arabic online therapy
Labayh	Arabic teletherapy, Saudi-founded	Gulf market focus and Saudi distribution
Tanfees	Arabic mental wellness	Wellness-adjacent positioning

The segment-by-segment map breaks into three buckets. The direct Arabic-first peers (Shezlong, Labayh, Tanfees) compete on the same therapist-marketplace logic that Hakini uses, but each is anchored to a different home geography. Adjacent substitutes include the global telehealth incumbents (BetterHelp, Talkspace) which can serve Arabic diaspora users in Western markets but generally lack a deep Arabic clinical bench, and traditional in-person clinics in MENA capitals. A third bucket, low-cost informal substitutes, includes general-purpose chat platforms and free content on YouTube and TikTok.

Hakini's defensible edges today are narrow but real. The Palestine origin gives it credibility with a population that is underserved by the larger Egyptian and Gulf platforms. Its content reach is a distribution asset that is expensive to replicate, and the diaspora user base provides foreign-currency revenue that can subsidize home-market access [ReliefWeb] [The National, Nov 2021].

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Competitor names confirmed by CB Insights; relative funding and positioning partially inferred from public coverage.

Opportunity

If Hakini executes, the prize is becoming the default Arabic-language mental health platform for both MENA residents and the global Arabic diaspora. Hakini's combination of clinical marketplace, content engine, and AI-assisted self-help is the right product shape for that role, and its early reach suggests the playbook is working at small scale [LinkedIn] [ReliefWeb] [The National, Nov 2021].

Scenario	What happens	Catalyst
Diaspora-led ARPU expansion	Hakini doubles down on Arabic-speaking users in Germany, Netherlands, US, and Gulf	Distribution partnerships
Levant therapist network consolidation	Hakini becomes the primary employer of record for Arabic-speaking therapists	Series A round funding
Public-health partnership channel	Hakini becomes the digital mental health vendor for NGOs	Signed framework agreement

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Scenarios grounded in cited reach and geography; outcome sizing is illustrative and explicitly labelled as scenario, not forecast.

Sources

1. [CB Insights] Hakini - Products, Competitors, Financials, Employees, Headquarters Locations | https://www.cbinsights.com/company/hakini
2. [CB Insights] Hakini Stock Price, Funding, Valuation, Revenue & Financial Statements | https://www.cbinsights.com/company/hakini/financials
3. [LinkedIn] Hakini: The First Startup in Palestine Devoted to Mental Health and Wellbeing | https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hakini-first-startup-palestine-devoted-mental-health-wellbeing-
4. [LinkedIn] Hakini company page | https://www.linkedin.com/company/hakini
5. [The National, Nov 2021] Generation Start-up: How Hakini is boosting access to therapy in Palestine and beyond | https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/2021/11/25/generation-start-up-how-hakini-is-boosting-access-to-therapy-in-palestine-and-beyond/
6. [PitchBook] Hakini 2025 Company Profile: Valuation, Funding & Investors | https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/501875-47
7. [Wamda, Oct 2021] Four Mena startups receive Village Capital's Sustainability Mena 2021 investment | https://www.wamda.com/2021/10/mena-startups-receive-village-capitals-sustainability-mena-2021-investment
8. [Hakini] Hakini website | https://www.hakini.net/en
9. [ReliefWeb] The first startup in Palestine devoted to mental health and wellbeing | https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/first-startup-palestine-devoted-mental-health-and-wellbeing
10. [Forbes, Oct 2023] The Palestinian Startup Ecosystem Has Represented Economic Hope. War Is Decimating It | https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahemerson/2023/10/17/palestines-startup-ecosystem-has-represented-economic-hope-war-is-decimating-it/
11. [Village Capital] 21 Startups Selected for Village Capital's Sustainability MENA 2021 Accelerator Program | https://newsandviews.vilcap.com/press-releases/sustainability-mena-2021-cohort-companies
12. [Mercy Corps] The first startup in Palestine devoted to mental health and wellbeing | https://www.mercycorps.org/blog/startup-palestine-mental-health-wellbeing
13. [BuildPalestine] Hakini profile | https://buildpalestine.com/hakini/
14. [Polaris] Hakini listing | https://polaris.ps/listing/hakini/
15. [Global Innovation Exchange] Hakini | https://www.globalinnovationexchange.org/innovation/hakini