Middle Eastern Dating Apps
Hawaya is a blueprint for global companies looking to capitalize on diversity.
5 hours ago Iran has unveiled a dating app that aims to facilitate lasting marriages in the Islamic Republic, where the divorce rate is rising and birth rate falling. Hamdan, meaning 'companion' in Persian. ArabLove is a fantastic dating platform where millions of Arab singles join to find dates and relationships. ArabianDate is one of the safest Middle Eastern dating sites; it’s the best site to find love. Muslima is another amazing Middle Eastern dating site that allows members to join the dating site in a few minutes.
I didn’t know this for a fact before but it’s related to how they’re seen by others, my guess is: 1. Geographical fluke. Their location gave them a certain look that appeals to other people being not too white nor too dark and the advantage of sha. Aug 13, 2015 This dating app is the Middle East’s answer to Tinder Matchmallows wants to help alleviate the pressure of online dating. Matchmallows was designed with Middle Eastern users in mind, taking into account that it's more difficult for them, especially women, to feel comfortable posting photos of themselves and their real.
Sameh Saleh is the Founder & CEO of Hawaya, a dating app that was developed in Cairo, Egypt and acquired by Match Group. He tells his story on Episode 47 of The Men’s Room podcast.
Banking on an app developed specifically for Muslims at a time when the world is trending towards inclusivity seems counterintuitive, but the reality is that cultural differences exist and tapping into this on a large scale is every multinational corporation’s wet dream.
That’s exactly what Dallas-based Match Group did when they acquired the Egyptian dating app Harmonica (now Hawaya) in August 2019, adding to a roster of over 20 dating apps that includes Lexa.nl in the Netherlands, neu.de in Germany, ParPerfeito in Brazil, Black People Meet and Chispa for Hispanics. Like Hawaya, those last two are particularly alluring from a business perspective as they cast a wide net that is not limited by geography. In point of fact, Hawaya was designed to help Muslims find a life partner, so while it was developed and tested in Egypt, it is already being rolled out all around the world, including in Canada I just discovered by happenstance, where it was launched in July 2020. (I came across this in the news, not as a potential user. Although, the two week quarantine upon landing in Canada did have its moments.)
Hawaya’s acquisition news went largely unreported but for the American company, this Egyptian startup promises to be a massive golden goose, if you consider that Islam has at least 1.8 billion adherents, making up about 24.1% of the world population. Furthermore, studies suggest that Islam is the fastest-growing major religion in the world and the number of Muslims worldwide is projected to be nearly 2.8 billion by 2050. Match Group’s current market cap of over $20 billion could very well seem like humble beginnings by that time.
I interviewed Hawaya’s easy-going CEO Sameh Saleh in early 2020, fresh off the exit and also post company name change. That move replaced ‘Harmonica’ with a more appropriate moniker that includes the Arabic word for love, hawa. Saleh co-founded the app in early 2017 with Tamer Saleh, Shaymaa Aly & Aly Khaled.
“Four years ago I was living in Malaysia and I noticed how hard it was for women in the Middle East to find a life partner. My sister is very close to me and she was going through this journey. There was a lot of pressure on her and the only available solutions were arranged marriage, which wasn’t very efficient, and online dating platforms, which at that time were not really safe or private enough. This is where we said ‘We need to find an environment that’s private enough for our sisters, our cousins, our friends,” recalled Saleh.
It was a problem begging for a solution. Marriage is next to mandatory in conservative Muslim culture, and the process leading to it has little to do with the way things are done in the West. There’s no dating and then ‘let’s see where this goes’, or God forbid, ‘let’s live together to find out if we’re compatible’.
I remember an Egyptian friend in Journalism school who told me about her summer trip to Cairo. The concierge (or custodian) of her building would watch her disapprovingly going in and out, even reprimanding her once for socializing with a male friend. Fraternizing with the opposite sex is socially unacceptable in Egypt, as it is in many Gulf countries and within Muslim families and communities around the globe.
The fact that I still remember this little anecdote shows how absurd it seemed to me at the time that a college student could not socialize freely and that an unrelated man should have a say in a young woman’s life. It provides a flyover glimpse at the deeply-rooted differences that exist between our Western cultures and those complex social behaviors that could never be fully grasped by a board of directors in Texas.
For instance, the importance of familial approval. Hawaya has a feature that replicates the real-life tradition of ‘meeting the parents’ of the potential mate before things progress to anything more serious. “The Guardian feature means that women can allow their cousin, or their best friend or even their parents to look at their chats, if the woman wants to,” Saleh explained.
Only an attuned insider could create a product that anticipates the dating behavior of their users down to the minutiae. “That’s what makes us very unique: we did not take the success of Tinder and say, ‘Let’s make a copy for the Middle East.’ That’s not how we started,” Saleh explained. “Even Liberals in the Middle East and Muslims across the globe, the way we approach relationships is very different. We always approach relationships with high intent, seeking marriage eventually. And that’s what makes Hawaya a unique proposition, globally.”
Saleh and his co-founders knew the time was right to create new tech-enabled habits in this region steeped in history and tradition. Online dating is still somewhat taboo in the Middle East but that’s changing now, driven in part by Hawaya. The truth is that arranged marriages, even in the most conservative Muslim settings, were ripe for a technological boost.
“People now think about the fact that they’re using technology in every aspect of their lives, and they want to find a life partner that they feel comfortable being with and continue their life journey with,” Saleh reflected. It’s worth noting that as of April 2019, 67.2 percent of the population across the Middle East had access to the internet, so this is a population eager to adopt the sophisticated digital tools that the West has had access to for some time now.
Last but not least, Hawaya also zoned in on a trend that’s pretty much defined the current social, marketing and startup environment we find ourselves in on a global level: women’s empowerment. While the startup ecosystem in the Middle East is no exception, female-centric products and content are in demand. It’s also no secret that VCs in the Middle East sometimes favor women-run startups in the same way Yale University favors certain under-represented races.
Merit-based vs affirmative action might be a prickly issue, but from a broader social-equality perspective, giving women more control in the game of love was a timely and positive move. How well the app has been funded and received is proof of that. In this part of the world where modesty and head coverings are the norm, the focus on giving women a safe and private online environment was perhaps the magic ingredient in the startup’s success.
“We really focused on safety and privacy, because we know there’s still stigma in this market. My partner at Hawaya is a woman and I’m doing this for my sister, so we made sure the app is super private and safe to use. We introduced this selfie verification concept where all our users have to be ‘selfie verified’. We use AI technology to make sure the photo you uploaded is actually your photo. This weeds out people who aren’t serious and all the fake profiles,” he explained. “We also have this feature where you can hide your photos and blur them, so that once you’re comfortable you can start un-blurring your photo.”
By really fleshing out what the specific needs of their market were, the team at Hawaya has managed to eliminate all the barriers. They have created a precisely shaped puzzle piece that fits perfectly into the global Muslim mindset. “Egypt is a great market to test your app. We have some diversity so you can get metrics. Once you cater to these demographics, you can scale in other markets now that we’re seeing all these VCs going across countries; you can raise funds in Egypt but you can also easily raise funds from KSA, Dubai and so on. These types of arms help you expand to other countries in the region, and that’s really, really powerful,” he admitted. “We’re proving to be a global app, and are proving that an app out of Egypt could provide services to users all across the world. That’s really a beautiful story and I think it can be done again. It’s not a unique story. I think that many problems we have in Egypt, if we find a real solution to it, there’s no reason why it can’t go global, even beyond the Arab world.”
As global tech-based corporations look for ways to reach untapped groups in the population and extend their reach beyond borders, there’s no doubt that acquisitions of localized startups in emerging markets will happen more and more frequently. This will allow those locally-based companies to scale up while allowing larger corporations to avoid faux-pas in foreign markets and the heavy cost of R&D. After all, AI is the driver for technology, but it always begins with NI (Natural Intelligence).
This article was first published in Data Driven Investor as an excerpt from ‘The Men’s Room: 50 Lessons From The Arab Renaissance.'
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