Elie Habib
The story
Elie Habib graduated from the Lebanese American University in 1994 with a degree in computer science. He was CTO of Naharnet, one of the first portals in the Middle East, and co-founded PowerMeMobile, a mobile messaging company that worked with phone operators. With Eddy Maroun he set out to give the Arab world a legal way to stream music at a time when piracy was the norm, and according to the transcript the pair put in $200,000 of their own money. Anghami launched in late 2012. Because few people in the region had bank accounts, the founders let users pay through their phone bill: the first operator deal was with Orange in Jordan, and Anghami went on to sign around 40 direct telecom partnerships. The company received several acquisition approaches over the years. In February 2022 it listed on Nasdaq through a merger with Vistas Media Acquisition Company, the first Arab technology company to do so. After OSN+ took a controlling stake in 2024, Habib, until then CTO, became chief executive of the combined business, which reported more than 3.5 million paying subscribers in 2025.
