Swoo, a live streaming and broadcasting app, unveiled the winners of the finale of its month-long contest - Swooperstar 2017 - on Wednesday, January 2, 2018. A total of $60,000 was given in cash prizes through the four weeks of December 2017.

Swoo is the first live streaming application, made in UAE, used by celebrities, influencers, thought leaders and experts to connect with audiences from across the globe. It was developed by Algorythma, which is the technology arm of the Abu Dhabi Financial Group. 

Within four months of its launch, Swoo has reached hundreds of thousands of users, mainly from South Asia and the MENA region. It currently has 720,000 installs and is slated to cross a million users within the next month.

Swooperstar 2017 began on the December 1, 2017 and had weekly winners leading up to New Year’s eve.

The competition was initially designed to recognize the best broadcast of the week with $10,000 based on the quality of its content and the amount of engagement received. However, it was revised to a cash prize of $15,000 total for the top three broadcasts from the second week of the competition, due to the huge response received.

Divyesh Mahajan, Acting CEO of Swoo, said “While we knew Swooperstar 2017 would be a competition that people would love, we were still surprised by the enormous response it received. We’ve seen hundreds of broadcasters sign up over the last month and have witnessed our goal of making Swoo a platform for high quality, engaging content come to fruition.”

The final week had four winners who took home a total of $20,000. The first prize winner was Lebanese actress Nadine El Rassi who won $15,000. In the second place were Arunita Sinha and Jayvijay Sachan, both from India, and won $2,000 each. In the third place came Rishabh Singh from India with a $1,000 prize.

Winners of the previous three weeks were: Shaymaa Younes ($10,000), Abhiruchi Singh ($10,000), Jacky Harb ($3,000), Nora Shalaby ($2,000), Maii Abdelhady ($10,000), Dr. Mohammed Said ($3,000), and Zaiena Haider ($2,000).