IDEA: Please tell us more about Malaeb and what inspired you to create the app?

Malaeb is a social community app that connects people through sports. It allows users to join and create matches around them and book their favorite sports venues. Malaeb started 3 years ago in Bahrain and is currently operating in 4 others countries which are Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, and Kuwait. Ever since its inception, Malaeb has managed to enable over 100,000 people to play their favorite sport through the app.

COLLABORATION AND COMMUNITY: Malaeb deals with the issues of collaboration and community. Why is addressing this need important for your business and for other businesses today?

Technological developments have paved the way for many businesses to come up with solutions to either solve problems that are faced within communities or to connect members of that society together through different means. We at Malaeb believe that sports is an integral aspect of any successful and healthy community and we want to help people continue their health or entertainment habits regardless of their location, social status, or schedule.

CHALLENGES: What were the challenges that you faced in starting your business and how were you able to overcome these challenges?

We are tapping into an offline market that hasn’t been tapped into on a huge scale or on a global level. We are also trying to convert a highly offline market into an online one which takes a lot of time in terms of adapting the mindsets of both the venues and users into using a solution like ours. Finding our product market fit in terms of a product that we can scale has also been a challenge to us. We have overcome some of these challenges by constantly innovating and experimenting in our approach until we find the solution.

TENMOU ENTREPRENEUR: You received help from Tenmou (Angel Investors) in the startup phase of your business? How has this helped you to grow and scale?

The funding provided by Tenmou has helped us into converting our product from an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to a fully operational product that helped us acquire more customers and expand into new markets.

TIPS: What tips can you share to other aspiring entrepreneurs?

To try and adapt a lean approach very early on by mainly learning through small and quick experiments, this will help them save time, money, and resources and provide them with the best experience to know what to build and how no matter what stage of the startup they are at.

BEntrepreneur Magazine sat down with Yasser Abdulaziz, Founder of Malaeb app to talk about football, community, and what their app does to inspire and encourage sports in the GCC.