Ibrahim Al-Khulaifi, co-founder and CTO, Teeela

What inspired you to start this business?

Growing up in the Middle East, we have witnessed the monumental transformation of shopping from offline to online. As young Kuwaitis, we wanted to be a part of this change and identified gaps in the market we could help improve. The toys and gifting segments are particularly interesting due to the high expectations of customers, as they are shopping for their child or loved one. But this also means if you get the experience right, you see incredible customer satisfaction. We identified an opportunity to transform the toys and gifting segment, and much like Amazon started with books, we set out a few years ago to perfect the family gifting experience.

What is the core concept of Teeela?

Teeela is built to provide families with the easiest, quickest, and most personalised gifting and toy buying experience. Through a dedicated app that is easy to navigate, customers can browse tens of thousands of gifts, with filters and recommendations to simplify the buying process. Once a customer has selected their chosen gift, we provide uniquely personalised and customisable wrapping. It’s online gifting made simple.

Tell us about the co-founders of the company.

We’ve known each other since we played together as children growing up in Kuwait. As we got older, this bond grew into sharing our common interests in entrepreneurship. All of us had our own ventures before Teeela. Our CEO Abdulwahab had a marketing agency and printing press, our CMO Yahya created content for YouTube, and I’ve developed a fintech solution for students. We always talked about our experiences running our own solo projects, so when we had the opportunity to build Teeela together, we jumped at the opportunity.

What are some of the challenges you faced when starting off?

Initially, we built a website, but it became apparent that a mobile app would better suit the profile of our customers, so we switched models. It took seven months to transition, but we tested, failed, learned and improved our offering.

What are some of the key milestones of your business?

We received seed funding towards the end of 2019, and then the pandemic hit. We saw a huge surge in orders and we simply hadn’t anticipated such rapid growth overnight. We initially faced some difficulties with fulfillment and the backend couldn’t deal with that volume of traffic. The team rallied to find new, better ways to cope and that included investment in faster delivery, customised and personalised gift wrapping, and extensive upgrades across delivery, automation and backend. The pandemic shaped us and helped improve our operations to the point that we could acquire new customers but also retain them through a great user experience. If people are returning multiple times, it means you are providing a valuable solution for those customers.

Tell us about the latest funding round and how you plan to use it.

Our latest funding was a Pre-Series A funding round that raised $3.75m. It was led by Saudi Arabian investment firm Wealth Well and supported by strategic investment from Mad’a Investment Company, Al-Akeel family, and other prominent investors. The funding will be used to increase our presence and reach new audiences across the region, build our team and support product development.

Tell us about your expansion plans.

The first step is expansion into Saudi Arabia and UAE. We’ve built a strong model in Kuwait and believe that we can now target the $30bn gifting market across the Middle East. We aim to be the number one choice for families when they are buying gifts. Whether it’s a child’s birthday party or a special family occasion such as Eid, we want to be the first place that people think of in the gifting space.