New app aims to make shopping easier for Saudis

Prayer time five times a day is nothing new in the Middle East, but technology development in the region is allowing people to engage with it in different ways. One challenge surrounding these moment of solitude and contemplation in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia specifically is that all the shops are required, by law, to close. So, for the duration of prayer, which can last up to 40 minutes, no transactions can be performed.

Anyone who has spent any time in KSA has probably come up with their own way of dealing with this, making shopping plans around the prayer times of that particular day. This can be a tedious and tricky task, as no one day has the same prayer time; they change by a minute from one day to the next.

Enter Ahmed Alawaji. The young Riyadh-based software consultant has just launched Ymdi, an app that helps users find out how much time they have to make it to a shop or cafe before the doors close for prayer based on their current location. The founder tells Wamda that he always knew he wanted to create something that would help people with the prayer times but that he wasn’t sure how. “This is a big frustration in Saudi,” says Alawaji. “We thought this would help people better manage their time.”

Original article by Lucy Knight

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