By Fawaz Samara
Seven years ago, my brother Saber and I faced a big problem with home improvement service providers when we decided to renovate our home. Tradespeople were available only after long waiting times, and extensive processes were needed to contract with them and finally receive quality services..
We ended up having to contract more than five providers to work on our home renovation. We also had to take vacation days from our own work to supervise the renovations. Since the contractors did not stick to their time commitment, these vacation days went way overboard. Moreover, we did not have access to references to benchmark quoted prices. Overall, finding trusted and verified contractors was no easy task, and the quality of their workmanship was not guaranteed. It was a random market.
Saber and I took an interest in organizing this work and identified it as a business opportunity. We studied the local market and realized that most people struggle with similar problems. We began building our network of providers and launched our first company, naming it Mr. Fix. It was our first try at running a business. We operated it as a traditional business, received the orders, and created a new model in home renovation and maintenance.
Since 2018, we have followed the start-up scene in Palestine, the MENA region, and globally. This has inspired us to innovate our business model and turn Mr. Fix into a scalable start-up. We saw an opportunity to serve many people who struggle with similar problems and recently rebranded our technology platform Nabeeh, a web/mobile application platform for users who wish to conveniently access on-demand health and home-care providers that perform quality services. In 2021, we launched our test program, scaling the operation in the West Bank. We chose this name because Nabeeh refers to a smart person who “picks things up on the fly,” and we seek to offer our future customers, locally and regionally, this type of attentiveness. We are happy and grateful to receive support from Fikra – Paltel Group Innovation Hub that has allowed us to accomplish much of what a start-up requires.
Part of our pride in Nabeeh comes from the fact that it provides job opportunities to many skilled people. As a technology platform, we work with more than 500 service providers in our network across the West Bank; more than 100 of whom are women. We engage only trusted and verified service providers, as we conduct interviews and pre-scanning for all of them. Since the program is easy to use, our clients can book our services, and we then match them with one of our listed servicing companies.
Our company is solving yet another market problem by also offering health care services such as nursing, elderly care, babysitting, and access to medical testing. Likewise, our house-care services offer cleaning, maintenance, moving services, maids, beauty care, and wellness services such as nail and hair care, and massage.
Nabeeh now has a team of ten employees who cover operations, marketing, accounting, and technology services. We built our start-up on a set of values that everyone in our company lives and shares. One of these three values is building a meaningful business. This means that in addition to our focus on the business goal of profitability, we have a mission to re-invent health and home care in our region.
Our vision includes taking Nabeeh outside of Palestine and scaling it up in the region, given the huge market opportunity and the need for reliable, efficient, and guaranteed services among large numbers of people worldwide, especially in the MENA region.
