In a world where travel can be a complex and often daunting process, Orange Corners Baghdad alum and OCIF winner Mustafa Alwin is on a mission to make global mobility accessible to all. As the founder of travel app Kawenter, Mustafa has transformed the way people navigate the intricate web of visa requirements, making it easier than ever to explore new destinations. With roots in Iraq, where obtaining visas is notoriously difficult, Kawenter has grown rapidly, now serving over half a million users across the GCC and beyond. We sat down with Mustafa to learn more about Kawenter, the challenges of operating in regions with limited financial infrastructure and what it’s like to do business in the GCC.
Mustafa, thanks for joining us today! Could you introduce yourself and Kawenter?
My name is Mustafa and I’m the founder of Kawenter, a visa app. We focus on travel freedom. We help people get visa easily, which matters especially in regions like the Middle East. For example, the Iraqi passport is ranked the second worst passport in the world. So it’s very hard for us Iraqis to travel around the world, we need visas for almost every country. That’s why three years ago I started Kawenter. Right now we have over half a million users – although most no longer come from Iraq, but from the GCC countries: Saudia Arabia, Qatar, the UAE. We offer support in more than 180 countries, so even people from the US or Europe can use our app, which is available in iOS and Android. The process is really easy: you upload a copy of your passport to the app, pay the visa fees, and then download your visa from the app when it’s processed by the government.
Today, we offer more than just visa. You can also find travel requirements through Kawenter. For example, if I want to visit Malaysia or Singapore I need to fill in some forms before I travel. We provide information like this. We have an API integration with organisations like the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and some airlines. They provide us with information regarding travel requirements, we make sure our users can easily find this information through the app. And you can also book hotels and flights through the app. We also integrated our app with local travel agents in Iraq to offer travel packages for people who want to visit Iraq. Iraq is open for tourism, and coming from the US or Europe you can easily visit Iraq with a visa on arrival. Through our app, international tourists can book guides online before they come to Iraq.
We’re a team of eight people working on this full-time, with some extra support on freelance basis. We work between Baghdad, Istanbul, Dubai and other cities around the world. Kawenter is currently registered in two countries: the United States and the UAE. We’re also working on registering the company in Baghdad with the help of OCIF and KAPITA. So we’ll have three entities in three different countries. That’s necessary unfortunately, because it’s very hard to build a payment gateway in Iraq that accepts Visa or MasterCard. So we collect the money from our users in the US, send it to the UAE and then onwards to Iraq.
Kawenter offers support for travellers in more than 180 countries!
Mustafa Alwin, Founder and CEO of Kawenter
You mention OCIF and our implementing partner in Baghdad, KAPITA. What has Orange Corners and winning OCIF meant to you?
Orange Corners and the training I received were very important. It helped me understand how finance works, how to manage a team, define KPIs. I’m currently hiring people, and I use what I learnt a lot to hire and manage people. I’ve become so much better at that compared to 2-3 years ago. This especially matters when you’re growing as a company. You need to manage a team, market a product, acquire users, manage your finances. I learnt all that through Orange Corners.
I’m still in contact with the other startups in my cohort and with the Orange Corners team. They’re not just helping us to register Kawenter in Iraq, they also help us with paperwork, contact with the bank. Even though we’ve officially finished Orange Corners, they continue to help us. The OCIF loan we mainly use as cashflow and to pay developers to add new features to the app. The funds to register the company in Iraq came from our own profits though.
Why Dubai? Was it the lack of a good financial system back home, the GCC customer base or something else entirely?
There are many reasons, but the most important is that our customer right now is mainly based in the GCC countries. But also, having a payment gateway in Iraq would be expensive. We’d pay around 4% for each transaction. In Dubai, it’s 1 or 1.5%. So it’s much cheaper to receive money in Dubai. Also, Iraq doesn’t have a banking system connected to many other countries, which makes it hard to transfer money online. For example, if I wanted to get money from the US to Iraq, I’d have to travel to the US, collect the cash and send it through another entity like Western Union. In Dubai, everything is online. It was a bit more expensive to register our company in the UAE than it’s in Baghdad as we needed an actual office space, government fees were higher.. but after that we don’t need to visit a bank or the government anymore, all we need is our laptop. In Iraq, there’s a lot of bureaucracy, many processes. I need to be present to transfer or receive money. Our business depends a lot on transferring money, because in the travel industry we receive large amounts of money. If someone books a flight, that’ll be somewhere between 1,000-2,000 US dollars already. But if the banking system in Iraq would be improved, we’d like to have everything in Iraq. The main gateway, the HQ. But because of the current restrictions, we need to work with this workaround.
Are you considering opening other GCC offices as well?
I’m planning to open one in Saudi Arabia, but right now it’s still a bit complicated to open an office in Riyadh. But Saudis are our main customers, numbering around 150,000. They’re also our highest-paying customers. Their economy is booming, so they’re willing to spend on travel. Having an office there would not only allow us to acquire more customers, it’d also open us to investments from Saudi Arabia. Because Saudi Arabia is investing a lot of money in startups, also from other countries.
Are you interested in finding investors?
Until now we haven’t received any investments, although we did get credits from organisations like Amazon. They help us with cheap hosting, marketing. We’re planning to start raising by the end of the year, maybe the beginning of next year. But first we need to expand our user base even further. Until then, we’re building an even stronger foundation for Kawenter through IVP, a programme funded by the Iraqi government and the World Bank. They provide additional training on finance systems, how to build HR systems. We meet weekly to discuss what Kawenter needs, and their experts help us fix issues we come across.
We’re planning to start raising by the end of the year, maybe the beginning of next year
Mustafa Alwin, Kawenter
Many of our entrepreneurs are interested in doing business in the GCC countries. How’s that experience been for you?
Talking about the travel industry specifically, the GCC countries are great target countries because they have great economies and people spend a lot of money on travelling, on experiences. Through Kawenter they can easily get visas and book flights and hotels. For us, a plus here is that unlike in Iraq everyone has credit cards, uses online banking. So it’s very easy for us to acquire users from these countries as they already know how to use apps, how to pay online. We don’t need to spend a lot of money to acquire customers either. In Iraq, we’d spend around 10 US dollars to acquire a user. In the GCC countries, this would be less than 1 dollar. So for startups, this is a good environment to be in, and it’s easier to grow here than in Iraq or some other countries in the Middle East.
Did you face any challenges doing business in the GCC, or was it an easy step abroad because you come from a similar culture?
I think it’s pretty easy for us to do business here, because we come from a similar culture, we speak the same language.. and in general doing the paperwork here is very easy. We haven’t faced any issues yet. Everything is online. It took less than a week to set up an office in Dubai. I got my resident card within three days, registering the company took about 1.5 days. And we don’t pay a lot of taxes in Dubai or the GCC either. In the US or Europe you might pay 10-20% tax each year.
The GCC is a good environment to be in for a startup, as it’s easier to grow here than in Iraq or some other countries in the Middle East
Mustafa Alwin, Kawenter
Do you have any advice for entrepreneurs also considering to expand to the GCC?
I think the most important thing I learnt so far is the importance of knowing where your customer is, how to target them. You need to be where your customers are. For example, some people use Facebook or Twitter ads, but what worked best for us was SEO. In the GCC countries, people just use Google to look for visa information, and not social media. We tried Twitter, Facebook and YouTube ads, but all failed. The one channel we had a lot of success without even spending any money was Google. So we decided to focus on SEO mostly. But every industry has different channels that work best, so you need to find out what are the right channels for you.
And you also need to have a great customer support service, because many people here need support after buying a product. Our users in Europe or the US don’t need a lot of support, they just buy a product and that’s it. Here people contact you before buying and after buying your products. You need to have a great team to give them the right experience.
My advice to startups considering to expand to the GCC? Know how to target your customer, and have a great customer support service!
Mustafa Alwin, Kawenter
What’s next for Kawenter?
Right now we’re building a B2B system, offering our services to airlines and other large companies in the Middle East and other parts of the world. Our aim is to integrate our product in their systems, so if people want to fly Lufthansa or British Airways, they can easily find travel requirements before they book that flight. And if they need a visa, they can apply through the website of the airlines, without having to download our app.
For the next quarter, our focus is on that, integrating our product with other companies, especially in Iraq. We’re already working on that with a large Iraqi payment company. We’re also integrating our app with some online travel agents, who will offer our product on their websites. This is our main focus right now: building B2B products and distribute them around the world!
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