Inspiration
People from all around the world come to Saudi Arabia every year to participate in religious practices and it has become a huge business or even economy but the bad news is that part of this business have always been in dirty hands and people inhabit Mecca have been kicked out of the game despite what they always suffer because of the huge flow of people from all around the world to their beloved home.
What it does
We decided to create a platform for the purpose of getting them more involved and to fight the harmful effects of the dirty business in the whole process, this platform acts as a marketplace for services from one side and service provider from the other side, the customer2customer revolutionary business model have come to serve the needs of the expanding market in Saudi Arabia especially in Mecca with a slightly different fashion that really suits them here, there are five main categories of services that the inhabitants can offer and the travelers really need :
1 - Accommodation 2 - Transportation 3 - Food 4 - Guidance 5 - Baggage Services
despite the complex form of customer needs that can be specialized easily, the experience itself is what makes us unique, in contrast with the rest of our competitors like AirBnB or Uber, we are looking for the new paved way for travelers to experience the practice like the Old Days and in addition to that we want the people inhabited in Mecca to do what they can do best and get credit of it, sounds good!
How we built it
We have built the website using the most popular framework of php right now which is Laravel, database engine is MySQL and the design pattern is MVC, some components are used in the UI of the project like Bootstrap for example.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The project is really huge even if we decided to target the middle class from MENA aged between 20 and 40 and which are already technology oriented, the amount of data that can be extracted, analysed and processed could have a huge impact in terms of predication, cautions of crowds and pure reading of the growing needs for the travelers around Mecca, this is the way when we are looking for the scaling aimed by the kingdom vision for 2030 to accommodate more than 100% net growth in numbers.
What we learned
We have learned that it is not always about technology only, it is the way we utilize it to help people and to fill the gaps in the markets that was initially created according to their needs. One of the great mentors we have met here said that "We couldn't force people to use our solutions. In fact, we should encourage them to do so!"
What's next for F-058-Marhaba Bikom
The on spot request services, when we expand from the pc screens to the mobiles, wearable and other smart devices!
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