Sabah Al Shamsi and his Italian business partner, Alessandro Rinaldi, started Help4u.today to empower the local SMEs with a digital platform so that they can easily connect with consumers.
“Small businesses in the region are still poorly digitised when compared with individuals and families who now literally live online,” says Al Shamsi, a graduate from the Baylor University in the US. He headed the IT departments of various organisations in Dubai before starting the company.
Whether you are looking for a house help or a professional pet walker or the best possible rate to wash your car, Help4u.today can connect customers with the service providers, while allowing them to compare the rates, book, pay and monitor the services through a smart app.
“We have grown our customer base by 88 per cent since October last year and revenues by 150 per cent year to date,” says Al Shamsi, adding, “So far, we have built the company through our personal investment where our aim was to create a reliable and strong platform. However, now we can focus on marketing and brand awareness where we would probably need a fresh injection of capital. We are also keen to let a third party fund to join the team.”
Starting a business presents many challenges and Al Shamsi had to overcome many hurdles to grow his business. “It was hard in the beginning as no one knew or trusted us. Getting service providers on board was also difficult as we could not guarantee any tangible leads to them. However, after working hard for the last couple of years, we have been able to improve our credibility as a reliable marketplace.”
“We have noticed a hike in the number of service providers wanting to join our platform. We took their feedback and developed a platform for them, addressing exactly the pains they mentioned to us. We are looking at making something useful for both our providers and the end customers.
“Our aim is to become the leading marketplace for home services in the GCC,” he says.
