Behind jalebi: Took me 15 years to admit my first startup was a terrible idea. Awards don’t equal fortune.
Behind jalebi: Took me 15 years to admit my first startup was a terrible idea. Awards don’t equal fortune.
You might see Zohare Haider as a successful co-founder of a multi-award-winning UAE-based startup. But what’s all this fame really about? Learn more about Zohare's journey in this interview.
First newsletter of 2024 after a short holiday break (that I didn’t end up having and instead started a fun new project I hope you’ll love 🎁 - but more on that at the end).
Hope you enjoyed some rest! And welcome to 31 subscribers who recently joined 🎉!
We're kicking off the year strong with Zohare Haider, co-founder and CEO of Jalebi. If you're from the UAE/KSA startup scene, I bet you know Zohare. His posts about all the achievements he celebrated in 2023 were popping up on my LinkedIn every month. So I got curious - Who is this man, winning the most prestigious awards by Entrepreneur Magazine, Gitex, and even the government as a Future 100 startup of the UAE?
From my short journey as a founder, I know you cannot measure startup success only by its awards. So the question is, what does this fame mean for Zohare? Is the product really this good? What’s happening behind the scenes and is he open enough to share that with all of us?
Well, I think you’ll be really surprised about the real, unfiltered story of Zohare and jalebi - read till the end!
By the way, it was Zohare’s 44th birthday on the 4th of Jan - we wish you all the best. Keep rocking, Zohare 🚀.
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Jalebi is your third venture, it seems like entrepreneurship comes naturally to you. Is that so?
Entrepreneurship wasn't a deliberate goal; it was always about building something meaningful. And for 15 years, I was losing in this game.After graduating from College in the US in 2004 and returning to Pakistan, I faced a quality issue in a restaurant, which sparked the idea for my first venture, foona. This was in 2005, before the rise of social media. I wanted to create a platform for customers to share feedback and find other important information about the venue.
I was building it for 15 years, on and off with my full-time jobs.It really took off when I already lived in Dubai. I knew that if I want to succeed, I have to stop being this shadow entrepreneur. My corporate career was like my wife, and then I've got this parallel on the side for all these years.
In 2014, I went to the Web Summit in Dublin with my engineer from Pakistan, and it was a transformational journey for both. I was sitting there, watching how everyone is doing something exciting, and I’m just thinking that I’ve spent all this money to come here and how I needed to make something out of it. I looked at my engineer and asked - “If we started a digital agency, what would we name it?” Without even taking a pause, he responded “Digital Street”. At that time, I had about 150 domains, which he managed, and knew that if I wanted to grow foona and become a full-time entrepreneur, I had to have some stable income, and the easiest way was to start a service company doing what I knew well, digital brand building.
We started the business with my wife as co-founder, who’s a successful career artist. Digital Street still operates till now with an independent team and many amazing global clients - just without me or my wife, who was the CEO for 8 years.
Well, and foona? Long story short, we shelved the business when COVID hit. It was a long 15 years with different models that we never found strong demand for. But in the end, it helped me to discover more meaningful problems in the industry, and that’s where jalebi enters the game.
So, when did you take the leap to become a full-time founder?
In 2015, I launched Digital Street, and only in 2018 did I leave my corporate job and become full-time with the agency as a platform for me to do my next thing. It was a coincidence when my contract was expiring, and that was the opportunity to go for it - if not now, then when. I was already in my late 30s.I made an 18-month exit plan, adjusted my spending habits, paid off all debts, and bought a house so that we were ready for uncertain times.
The agency was never really my dream nor was it my wife's dream, but we ended up being very successful with it, and it helped us work on foona and then jalebi.
Why restaurants, when you never worked in hospitality?
I love food and the way it connects people and developed a general curiosity for problem-solving, so I knew I wanted to work in this industry.
There are two ways you can build a startup - either you’re a domain expert, experienced at the problem you’re solving firsthand. Or, you surround yourself with experts. And we took the second path.
We have over a hundred years of F&B experience among our employees and advisors.
Tell me more about jalebi - how did you come up with the idea?
Right after I left my job in 2018, I joined an incubator in Karachi, at that time still with foona. I begged them to accept me and I promised I’d be flying from Dubai to all key events. I experienced my existential crisis there, as I was the old, late 30s founder with a corporate career that meant nothing in this world. I felt like nobody. This is where I met my earliest advisor, Ali Samir, who played an instrumental role in shaping my transition from foona to jalebi.
Before jalebi, I was fortunate in finding a great co-founder, Rizwan, who really helped me to think of different models we could try with foona. But as COVID hit, we knew foona had to stop, but still wanted to work together. We also had a clear idea of where to start, and the world was in a frighteningly narrow place, which helped us focus.
We pitched many ideas - QR payments, aggregator of food aggregators, but nothing stuck, and everything already existed, one way or another. Eventually, we ended up being selected by Techstars in 2021, after our second try, with a menu manager for restaurants. We got accepted to the S3 program by Sheraa too, earlier in the same year.
At Techstars and S3, they pushed us to talk to real people, restaurant owners, mentors - not only do our desktop research. This was crucial. We were going door to door, to hundreds of restaurant owners, just trying to talk about their struggles, how they operate, without a product to sell.
One restaurant owner changed the course of foona to jalebi - his name is Ahmad Bondouq. I was trying to learn how his restaurant works, and he said: “I wish there was a system that would just connect the back of the restaurant with the front in one product. Starting with inventory, everything else will follow.” That was it, that was the product we needed to build.We’ve learned that most founders are trying to solve customer-facing problems and that space is pretty crowded. We took a different approach, focusing on the backend, really helping restaurants minimize waste, have healthy pricing, and not lose money on badly managed inventory.
So, as a part of Techstars, we pivoted and started building a new product. It was a huge responsibility; we had 13 weeks before we’d pitch in front of investors, and ministers. We had to present something we’re proud of. It was a crazy 4-month hackathon, sleeping on the floor and not seeing my family.
It worked out, we haven’t changed our product since; it’s been 2 years, we’ve raised over $1 million with 30 investors, have about 200 customers in 5 markets, and 25 full-time employees.
And by the way, Ahmad, the restaurant owner, became our first employee in UAE and is now leading acquisitions.
You won several awards, including recently Future 100 - what does it really mean for you?
We got an award from the Entrepreneur Magazine, and then we won at Gitex, the Supernova pitch competition, which we got some money with. And recently the Future 100.
My wife said to me, I think after the second award this year: “You've got all this fame, now where's the fortune?”
And the reality is that awards don’t necessarily manifest into money, and you need money to run the business. However, we're taking on a pretty old and very traditional industry and we have to make some noise to stand out and be visible. And to be honest, this helps a lot.
It’s also a big responsibility - people are expecting what’s coming next. And to be honest, I don’t know. We’d probably have to go international for that. The pressure of meeting people’s higher and higher expectations is stressful and I don’t want to focus on winning awards, but building a profitable business.
What’s your focus with jalebi in 2024?
2022 and 2023 were a lot about fundraising, building the product, and marketing. 2024 will be about growing our customer base, completely focusing on breaking even, profitability, and becoming cash-positive.
We had to raise funds to develop our own POS as a part of the inventory solution, and to integrate with some of the best payment companies, so now it’s time to grow across our markets.
You’re a very well-networked founder; what’s your secret to networking in the UAE and making the right connections?
I would say, show up. Meet as many people as you can, a few of those people will stick around. They like what you're doing, they like you, you like them. You have to have a high quantum of interactions to find the people who will actually match you in your journey.
But in the process, you also must constantly challenge how you talk about yourself, and how you talk about what you do to make it interesting and exciting. Also because you get tired of hearing your own voice over and over again, so you also want to keep it interesting for yourself.
Having a solid network is in the top 3 most important things in building a company for me. The other two are a great team and a strong family life.
How is your experience with fundraising so far, any tips for founders in the same shoes?
2023 has been a catastrophic year for fundraising globally for everybody. A lot of people have struggled a great deal and we've been no exception to that. My very good friends’ companies have had to shut down or they've been acquired through very tough deals. I had to creatively source funds into our company this year to push through.
However, generally speaking on how to build investor relations, one thing is key: re-evaluating your narrative and constantly challenging the impact and value of the story you're telling and how you get them to lean in on what you do. You have to create excitement, with ebbs and flows.
Especially with angels, which are many of jalebi investors, they invest because they like the space you’re in and they like something about you as a founder.
And don’t forget, fundraising isn’t the end journey; it’s there to fuel the car, but you can still walk your way. Never let fundraising define your company culture.
Thank you Zohare for sipping coffee with me, being honest and sharing what really is behind all that fame. Let the fortune come in 2024 🚀
Kristina
…so what was my “holiday project”?
If you been here for a while, you know how obsessed I am about skipping middle men, sharing how to do stuff on your own in the UAE and finding tips and tricks to make startup life easier here.
There are so many questions you’re sending to me, I see in founders chats, on LinkedIn, reddit - we are missing reliable, independent sources. Well, not any more.
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