This Scottish startup is setting out to be the next big thing in job networking

Pitching itself as the new “LinkedIn for Muslims,” Scottish networking site Executive Muslims has set its bar high.

Founded by six Muslim professionals from across the world, the careers website launched last month has been six years in the making and has required extensive technology building and testing.

But the site’s CEO, Saleem Yousef, is confident that with the right marketing strategy, Executive Muslims will reach its forecast target of one million users, rising to eight million users over a four-to-six-year timeframe.

Soft-launched just six weeks ago, the global site already has over 1,000 registered members hailing from industries such as medicine, law, accountancy, engineering and academia. Saleem says that the site’s users are signing up from countries as wide-ranging as Dubai, France, Germany, Turkey, the UK, Pakistan, India and Malaysia.

He explains, “The global Muslim community is growing rapidly, with the worldwide population rising from 1.6 billion in 2010 to 2.2 billion by 2030, according to the Pew Research Center.”

“Many of these Muslims are now middle-class professionals and seeking to connect with other professionals globally. It’s an untapped marketplace.”

Like LinkedIn, Executive Muslims aims to provide a centralised hub for connecting professionals, companies and communities across the globe. 

 “We are looking at a predominately Muslim population base and an internet-savvy one at that. Thomson Reuters has valued the global Islamic economy at $1.9 trillion and we are looking to create a truly global connective platform to capitalise on that opportunity,” Saleem said.

While the site is predominately aimed at Muslims, the CEO stresses that Executive Muslims is a community that is open to all religions and nationalities.

“Our networking site has been designed to target a specific group—Muslims—and we want to a create a global community as a group, but there’s nothing exclusive or divisive about it. However, the site is likely to include information and groups that focus on Muslim-centric industries, such as Islamic finance and halal food.”

Once they sign up to Executive Muslims, users can set up groups and connect with people, just as in LinkedIn. They can also create blogs and answer questions in a similar style to the popular question-and-answer site Quora.

EXPANDING GLOBALLY

Saleem said that the Scottish tech startup has been created with a Dubai structure to give Executive Muslims a MENA presence. The group holds the first tech startup licence in the Dubai Silicon Oasis free zone.

Imminent focus markets for the Executive Muslim site include countries and regions with large Muslim populations, such as MENA, Malaysia, Indonesia, the UK, France and Germany.

 “We are working with a core team of regional ambassadors who will help grow our site’s reach across the world. They will be conducting webinars and Skype presentations to demonstrate the site’s functions to potential users,” Saleem said.

The site, which has been self-funded to date, will apportion a large part of its capital to building a robust marketing strategy across vertical online and offline marketing as well as e-commerce.

Saleem added, “Thousands of hours of work, brainstorming, developing, imagining and praying have been spent building up the platform to what it is today. We hope that Muslims and non-Muslims from around the world can benefit from what Executive Muslim has to offer.”