Women of the MENA region are standing in the forefront of the work landscape, and especially so in the tech and services industry. Middle Eastern countries and their burgeoning economies are becoming increasingly dependent on skilled and flexible labor and are following other developed countries in the emergence of a “freelance market:” a market where jobs are met and accomplished by skilled individuals who are not necessarily connected to any long-term commitments. Three Female Entrepreneurs, Raghad Akram, Taimaa Janat and Noora Al-Marri, have furthered the role of women in developing and diversifying MENA economies with the introduction of an ambitious intermediary platform that connects businesses in dire need of skilled workers for short-projects. “Gooby” is the most recent platform to hit the region and act as an essential intermediary between freelancers and businesses. Let’s identify some key facts and features of Gooby with the ambitious Three founders responsible for this innovative platform.
We asked one of the founders to give us a rundown on what the platform is in a nutshell.
“Gooby.net is a digital platform made to connect skilled freelancers with the demands of individuals and businesses. It emphasizes aspects such as ease and intuitiveness of usage and prioritizes the provision of the right service to the individual or business requesting it. The platform had officially soft-launched in the year 2020. We have an iOS and Android application already available, and we will be introducing a website version of the platform very soon. We are confident in its potential to be a leading platform in the freelancing industry, with our main goal being to cement its fingerprint on how people think of work in general,” said Raghad Akram.
With such high aims, Gooby would have to capture a large audience. So where does Gooby operate? “Though Gooby’s operations are based in three countries, with its headquarters in Qatar, and branches in Estonia and Turkey, the platform is accessible and runs globally. We wanted to ensure that we are connecting freelancers and clients regardless of their locale or language, globally. And thus to accommodate that, we developed the platform with three available languages, English, Arabic and Turkish, with plans to add more down the line” responded Taimaa Janat.
“We are fortunate to have an exceptional team working on this platform, and I have a high degree of confidence in their capabilities, furthermore, we were fortunate that the Qatar Science Technology Park gave us a much-needed head start with their initial support” mentioned Noora Al-Marri.
“Our most important thing is to work hard to achieve and actualize our freelancers’ needs, and making sure we support their needs as much as possible, this is one of the goals for Gooby, and to achieve that goal is a win for Gooby, for freelancers, and clients all around the world” added Raghad.
As much the on-going pandemic has affected work all over the world, we can imagine that freelancers were also hit hard. How then, did Gooby deal with the difficulties that came as a result of it? “Well, we found an opportunity in the COVID pandemic. This is because it has led to an influx of young, highly-skilled, first-time freelancers seeking alternate career opportunities; Gooby offers the world a wide variety of skills, with categories encompassing nutrition and fitness, to technology and art, all of which can be done by freelancers either on-site or online” concluded Taimaa