The app has a waitlist of over 10,000 users from across the Middle East, which was opened last March to test the region’s appetite for the commission-free online trading app sector. “Our biggest advantage is that we’ve built a platform in the region, for the region,” says Feras Jalbout, founder and CEO of Baraka, a fintech startup on a mission to educate, enable, and empower retail investors in the Middle East. “We’ve really gotten to know our audience, and created a product that speaks to them. We did that by taking an approach that would empower our target demographic. Plus, the majority of people who have been developing the Baraka app, whether in terms of tech, user experience, or content, are exactly the people we want to be using it.”

Jalbout adds that, currently, the sector consists of many apps which are “generic, complex, and not tailored to specific audiences.” He notes that this is the exact problem that he and his team wanted to tackle when building Baraka. “One of our priorities from day one has been to develop a regionally relevant platform,” he says. “Our core audience is based in the Middle East, so everything from the user experience on the app, to the tone and language of the content we produce, is personalized to them.” As such, the Baraka app is now available to download from both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store for all residents and citizens over the age of 18 in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, and Kuwait. It provides free and direct access to over 5,000 US-listed securities, including stocks, exchange-traded funds, and fractional shares with no minimum investment requirements. Besides that, the Baraka app also features a simplified dashboard for investors to monitor and track their portfolio, a content hub that includes daily market news, as well as an investment academy for users to build and test their knowledge. For more savvy investors, Baraka also offers the option of a paid tier that includes world-class equity research from its industry partner, Refinitiv.

Baraka’s rise follows the birth of a new wave of retail investors amid the global COVID-19 crisis who have made use of social media chat groups and other communication platforms and low-cost trading apps to enter this particular sector. This group of users is distinctly different from the investor groups that have historically been a part of this industry, who often belong to higher-income segments and are known to be traditional and rigid with respect to their bets.

Source Credit: Entrepreneur