How a Fish Burger in Paris Inspired Irhal, a Global Muslim Travel App
Five tips for a startup pitch
My first trip abroad alone was to Paris. I had just turned 20 and was excited about discovering a new city all on my own. I had read up about Paris before I left home and my dog-eared Paris guidebook was going to be my companion. I took a bus tour of the city and when we reached the Arc de Triumph I remember being distracted by the golden arches. I had spotted a McDonald’s. I was hungry and was not sure where I could find Halal food in Paris. After the tour ended I went there to have a fish burger.
I was in Paris to see the Mona Lisa and the Eiffel Tower, I was in the gastronomical capital of the world and I was attracted by a fish burger!
Since then I have visited many cities with my family and always felt the need to have a travel guide that caters to both my needs as a tourist and my needs as a practicing Muslim.
Fast forward to 2010, that memory of me peering out of a bus and looking at the golden arches triggered the launch of an Arabic/English website with city guides that include Halal restaurants, mosques and prayer timings. With Irhal.com a Muslim visitor to Paris or Beijing or Sydney can easily discover the important tourist attractions and shopping places of each city while knowing where the closest Halal restaurant is located.
Fast forward to 2014, websites are so yesterday. As a traveler I need a city guide on my smartphone and now we have the Irhal app.
While the app is available for download in both the Apple iTunes store and the Google Play Store, we have not officially “launched” the Irhal app yet. We wanted to update the city guides before making a formal launch announcement. Our team has a number of perfectionists in it. My designer, Sehyr, wants to make sure that every curved shape in the app is identical. The angle has to be exact. I wanted to make sure we updated every city before we launched. I do not want to promote an app with outdated content. But two things made me jump the gun and release the app with all cities even though only London has been updated. First, I read a book called “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries and he suggests that you should let your audience guide you. We are hoping that users will help us improve. Second, looking at it from an Islamic perspective, even if we have just one Halal restaurant or mosque listed in a city, if we are able to help one Muslim have a Halal meal or find a masjid, we are adding value. That realization sealed it. We had to release the app. We just placed a “Beta” tag on all cities and pushed it out the door in November 2014.
Pre formal launch we have about 25,000 downloads and the general response has been overwhelmingly positive. The Irhal app fills the need for Arabic travel content. Our website was visited by 1 million unique visitors in 2014 — more than 70% went to the Arabic section of Irhal. In the first half of 2015 we saw a 60% growth in user numbers.
Irhal has been a labor of love. It needed a tremendous amount of passion, dedication and resources. Passion is fueled by the fire within. Our team has plenty of that to keep going. Winning the Dubai Startup Weekend award and more recently the Best Islamic Economy Startup Award given by Dubai Silicon Oasis keeps the adrenaline flowing.
Resources are a whole new story. I have invested my personal resources to keep this project afloat. We are now seeking investments so that we can hire a team, update the content and launch a proper marketing campaign to promote Irhal. Unfortunately, most investors in the Middle East are only willing to invest $20,000 to $50,000 for 20% to 30% equity. We received a $100K offer from Dubai Silicon Oasis in Feb 2015 and refused. We have already spent multiple times that amount and we are looking for over $1 million in funding.
In May 2015 Irhal was selected by MassChallenge — the world’s largest startup accelerator for their June-October 2015 program. God willing, we are expecting to raise funds from US investors to help speed up our work.
The Islamic travel market is growing faster than the global average — even faster than Chinese tourism.
We have plans of adding new cities and eventually becoming the must-have resource for the 108 million Muslim tourists who spend $140 billion every year on travel. Besides the app we plan to provide our content to airlines from the Muslim world so that Irhal city guides can be seen on the Inflight Entertainment monitors on the back of every seat in an aircraft. Fasten your seat belts — the Irhal journey has just begun.
Irfan Ahmad, CEO, Irhal
5 tips in this story
So you read this story and you thought that it was just a good story. Well, think again. That was a startup pitch. And it had all 5 elements that are essential in a pitch.
Tip 1: Get the audience emotionally involved by telling a story. I was in Paris …
Tip 2: Where is the pain that you are removing? Muslim tourists need to find Halal restaurants when they travel abroad.
Tip 3: What is the market size? 108m Muslim tourists, growing faster than Chinese tourism and spending $140b every year
Tip 4: Show some traction. 1 million visitors in 2014, 60% growth in 2015. Won Startup Weekend Award and Best Islamic Economy Award, Accepted by MassChallenge
Tip 5: Let people know what you want. We are looking for over $1 million dollars in funding.
