Many months back, in an event in Erbil, a group of young men had a popup booth, bright and purple in colour, it was that one popular booth that you see in any event, they were the one with the buzz: It flooded with passionate, interested and excited people.
Their booth read Kurdivia. “Oh, it’s you!” I squealed. If you are in Kurdistan and unaware of Kurdivia, you’re in a cave, or a bubble, or perhaps in a bubble within a cave?
Young and old, men and women, girls and boys, approached the booth in excitement, ressentiment, frustration, joy and anger all asking about questions of last night, of the week before and the month before, why this answer and not that, why I answered slow, why did I win and not win, who beat me, who was with me and all the other details. An older man and his daughter approached the young men “please tell me who writes your questions,” they all point at one and laugh! What’s all the fuss about this mobile application?
What is Kurdivia? It is a mobile application, every night there are live questions that anyone can answer from the comfort of their own home. Although there is a time limit, and there are prizes and coupons to be won. You don’t answer one question, you lose the chance of moving up to the next question.
“It is a game-based coupon distribution system that helps brick-and-mortar businesses acquire customers by offering players discount and offers through the games. Players join live trivia games, answer questions and win coupons from local businesses. Then they visit the local business and make the purchase/redeem the coupon.” Explains Ahmad L. Jamal, pharmacist by degree, and COO of Kurdivia. The questions cover general knowledge in all the areas including entertainment and sport, and even brain teasers.
He adds: “The games begin at 8, 9, and 10 every night. If you are one minute late, you miss your chance to participate. Everyone sees the same questions at the same time and you have about 10-15 seconds per question. We chose to make the games live because it adds a lot of enthusiasm. Everyone is competing against everyone to get to the last question and win the prizes.” There is no limit to how many people can play, although if one question is answered in correctly participants are immediately out and do not take part in the following questions- there is also no age limit.
“In our new prize system, users get to win coupons by reaching certain questions (stations). And the winners of each game (those who get all of the questions right) will be awarded the ultimate coupon (a discount or offer bigger than all the other coupons).” There are advert spots and also logos of the sponsors on both the application and Kurdivia’s social media platforms.
The young men in the booth are social and outgoing. They are smiley, friendly, outspoken and evidently, very intelligent. Mohammed, the CEO left his doctor profession to pursue Kurdivia; this is commitment of a national crisis in my part of the world. These young men function with passion, dedication and limitless motivation. The COO, Ahmed, is a pharmacist by profession, and the other founders include an engineering student.
Mohammed Yassein, Ahmed Bayiz, Ahmed L. Jamal and Omer Sabah are the names behind the Kurdivia mobile application that shakes the city every night starting at 8 pm, sharp. Beside the founders, Kurdivia has eleven employees including designers, sales representatives, content creators and marketing individuals.
400 000 users per month in the two cities of Erbil and Sulaimaniya are on the platform, 200 000 are active weekly users, and every day on average 60 000 people play the trivia game. At the time of writing this article, Kurdivia is planning its launch in Duhok, projecting an additional 200 000 users.
Some of the questions on Kurdivia become viral on social media platforms with millions of views. Some are funny, others make you think and some are straight forward, but the ticking down seconds can make any person with a 200 IQ score stress and tap the wrong answer.
I often see people tweet about Kurdivia. It is evident, and Ahmed agrees, that the application has “provided a family-friendly, fun, competitive, and educational game for people to play with their loved ones. It brings them together (since the games are live) and gives them an opportunity to collaborate and have fun while trying to win the prizes.” In my part of the world, this is the first of its kind in history to have this many users, created in the Kurdish language.
Like many start-ups I have met in this Ebtedy series, Kurdivia too, has its handful of challenges; among the many that Ahmed lists include affording to hire skilled, professional and highly preforming staff as well as developers, lack of data on businesses and consumers’ demographics and behaviour. Additionally, the bureaucracy of establishing and maintaining a start-up comes with its unique challenges.
Kurdivia, in the past months has become sustainable with some ad spots on the app sold until January of 2023. Like many of the start-ups I have spoken to, the business approach has evolved over time, it’s a new market, new ideas are initiated and founders understand there are many trials and errors involved.
When speaking of the future, Ahmed discusses all the different ways the app is being developed behind the scenes to include various other options with the intention to further gain interest of the users, and of course win prizes and coupons!
Little did I know, can a love for knowledge and a little bit of competition shake the minds of some 60 000 individuals in my city, every evening! If this isn’t a start-up created with mind blowing brains, I don’t know what is!
By: Sazan M. Mandalawi, a facilitator, a PhD candidate in the field of education, and a passionate blogger herself focusing on culture and the creative scene in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
Copyright photos: Kurdivia