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Focus on an Entrepreneur: Kareem Arafat of Watwet

Last week we interview Reza Sadeha, the found of I'm Halal. Today, we caught up wtih Kareem Arafat, the CEO of WatWet, essentially an Arabic Twitter! I like it, and I certainly like the fact that you can access the service through SMS from several countries in the Middle East.

Enjoy!

TheNextWeb (TNW): What inspired you to create Watwet when twitter seems to be making major inroads in the region?

Kareem Arafat (KA): We actually started working on Watwet before the Twitter hype.

The founding team of our mother company, TootCorp, have been always focusing on user generated content and citizen media. Before Watwet, we launched Ikbis (ikbis.com), a leading video sharing service in the Arab World, and Toot (itoot.net) a blog aggregator. We believe the micro-blogging scene is still maturing and we want to focus on populating this expression format across the local mass in the markets we operate in.

TNW: How many users do you have today? Can you provide us with some demographic details (age and location)?

KA: I prefer not to answer this question until we have reached a certain milestone.

TNW: How do you intend on competing with twitter in the region?

KA: We want to focus on the local mass market. Twitter and Watwet are still popular among the early adopters and the tech savvy. In the coming year or two, it will be about taking it to the masses, and we want to have a decent share of this segment of the market.

TNW: Any interesting upcoming features you would like to tell our readers about?

KA: Well, we are working on a set of new enhancements. We are focusing on availability across platforms; desktop apps and mobile apps. Since we don't have millions of users, developers are less keen to create apps for us via our APIs. Thus, we are taking our time developing these apps since we are an extremely small team.

TNW: What was your largest challenge in establishing watwet in the Middle East?

KA: Many! At the very beginning, users did not understand the concept of micro-blogging. Now it is a bit more popular among people. Today our main challenges are around getting mobile operators to work with local brands like us and not only global brands, and finding the right strategic investors to fund our ambitious plans.

TNW: How is your website financed and do you intend on accessing any of the venture capital companies in the region? If you've already dealt with a VC, what is your opinion of the regional VCs and access to capital for start-up companies?

KA: We are financed by an angel investor. Yes, we are talking to VCs around the region. A couple of days ago, I attended a talk by Joi Ito in Amman, and one of the things he said that Japanese and Middle Eastern investors like to invest in what he terms "safe investments" i.e. companies with globally recognized brands, and end up with little upside if any. I agree with his point. I think VCs in the region should take more risk, and should increase their stakes and go for the steeper upside.

TNW: How do you view the regional start-up landscape?

KA: I think it is starting to mature up. I think investors will recognize technology as the new sector to invest in; after years of investment in lands, real estate and financial markets. So I think we will see some more funds available for startups. But having said so, mistakes and gaps in expectations (not every startup will be bought by Google!) will happen in the process. Generally, technology sector is more complicated, and will require more institutionalized approach to investment.

Additionally, while availability of funds will stimulate and entertain a startup scene to develop, it also requires other factors to sync in to make it all happen. We need more users connected to true broadband internet (an area I think that needs much more committed investment in), investment in knowledge and research; our universities should be improved massively. I really consider it an amazing miracle/achievement to have the talented people we have today in the region (mostly attributed to people improving their capacity on an individual basis and not driven by the educational institutions around them). Imagine, if the process of creating talent is institutionalized, we would be much better off.

I think Amman is one of the most startup-friendly cities in the region. Talent is more available relatively, and operational costs are reasonable. Dubai is great for networking, but operational costs are too high. Abu Dhabi, Beirut, Doha and Cairo are emerging fast. More and more clustering will happen in the coming 5-10 years. Hopefully by then, we will be VCs! :)

TNW: Finally, for our many twitter users who would like to migrate to watwet: Is there a way of integrating twitter posts with watwet (I know I can integrate watwet with twitter, but I'm already established on twitter, any advice)?

KA: Yes, you could migrate your latest tweets on Twitter, and sync in your Watwet and Twitter posts. Try out Watwet, if you like it, sync the accounts. We are happy to hear any suggestions from anyone. So write in.

A little bit about Kareem:

Kareem is one of the six founders of TootCorp and the CEO of Watwet. Before joining TootCorp, he practiced law in the areas of corporate and telecom laws and policy in Jordan. Kareem did his graduate studies at the University of Bristol in England in commercial law. He lived most of his life in Amman, and for short periods in Fukuoka, Montreal, Rome and Bristol. His father is Palestinian, and his mother is Japanese. Kareem is 29 years old.

You know the drill... If you have any more questions for Kareem, send them through the comments section below, and stay tuned for an interview with an entrepreneur from Syria next week!

Originally appeared on The Next Web, Middle East (http://thenextweb.com/me/)

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Filed under // interview jordan Middle East start-up startups tootcorp twitter Watwet

Posted by Khaled AlSaleh

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Interview with CEO of I'mHalal

Much has been written about I'mHalal, a Muslim search engine that's designed to filter through the internet clutter and provide a 'Muslim' internet browsing experience. More information can be found on their website.

To cut through the clutter ourselves and get a closer look, we went straight to the CEO and founder, Reza Sadeha.

TNW: Do you have any 'Muftis' or 'Imams' as part of your staff to help with the filtering process?! I have gone through your blog and through previous interviews, but I was wondering who, in particular, provided the views of what's halal and what is haram?!

RS: The first step we have taken before we started developing our filtering system was setting up an meeting with an Imam. We explained him what concept we wanted to develop and we asked him for his advice and what we should filter to make it a truly clean search engine. His advice was great and the best thing he told us was that we should block certain websites promoting false information about Islam for example.
The last few weeks we have been busy bees by crawling a huge amount of websites and we have set up a list of websites that we need to add to our filter because they have been confirmed to be spreading false information about Islam.
At I'mHalal we're actually pretty open to any suggestions, advice and feedback. We dedicated the first month of the launch to listen to what the Muslim community had to say about certain things we filter and which not. When the majority of our users thinks we're filtering a certain subject too much or too less we will fine tune our filters.

TNW: What compelled you to launch imhalal.com, and how do you see would it differ from a simple search engine like google with a higher setting on the SafeSearch Filtering?

RS: We had picked up that many Muslims avoided the internet because they we're afraid that they or their children would bump into explicit content, which is a shame because it's important everyone is able to collect information and get him or herself informed about certain subjects. Since search engines are the starting point of everyones journey of collecting information we started working out the idea of developing an search engine.
First of all we don't believe Google safe search is returning "clean" and safe enough results. We think we can develop a better filter since alternative search engines like Google don't focus mainly on their filtering systems. Second of all, our filters filter according to the standards of Islam.

TNW: Can you give us an idea of what the most common search terms on your website are?!

RS: Starting from next week we will show a tag cloud including the top 10 most searched terms per day/week. Currently we are not tracking the searches yet.

TNW: What do you see as your revenue model? If you will depend on advertising, will you restrict your advertising to what you believe falls within the Muslim internet users are a very hard to reach target group.

RS: We want to set up an advertising platform like Googles Adwords where only Islamic approved advertising campaigns can be set up. With our advertising platform, Governments and Companies that had a hard time reaching their Muslim target group can finally set up appropriate and effective advertising campaigns.

TNW: Have you approached any regional investors/ venture capital funds? What has your experience been like?

RS: We haven't actively been looking for an investor yet but we have already been approached by a venture capital that was interested in taking shares in I'mHalal at a later stage when we had revenues. All I can hint about this Venture is their one of the investors in Twitter ;).

TNW: On a grander scheme, do you see your market segmentation and focus on the Muslim market as an impediment to grow?

RS: More and more Muslims are becoming active on the internet and we believe that there is a lack of tools for us to explore the net in a clean environment. Obviously the more Muslims become active online the bigger I'mHalal will become. The current version of I'mHalal which is online right now is really the first and basic version. Besides developing a search engine designed for Muslims we also aim to deliver the best search solution with the best functionalities.

imhalal-screenshot

Reza also mentioned that they will be introducing some changes to the layout over the next few weeks, so be on the look out for that.

We're going to be putting the website to a test ourselves. Check back next week!

Note: parts of the interview have been edited for easier readability.

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Filed under // halal interview islam search engine startup

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Focus on an Entrepreneur: Kareem Arafat of Watwet

Interview with CEO of I'mHalal