10 years is a threshold to know you’re doing something.
And it’s been 10 years since we started our journey of Greentech Apps back in 2015.
By the permission of Allah (swt), we’ve grown from a man with a simple idea to an organisation helping more than 8 million Muslims better understand Islam.
The Problem
In the words of our Founder, Nabil Mossharraf Hossain,
When I started GTAF, I was simply looking for a better way to understand the Quran myself, using Tafsir and word-by-word analysis. I never imagined this project would grow into what it is today. This success came only through Allah’s will and mercy, not through our own abilities.
The initial journey was challenging, sitting in our homes, building apps when we were just learning to code. Nabil was a recent graduate from Electrical Engineering, wanting to do something for the Ummah. And I myself was just recently admitted into a university pursuing my CS degree.
There have been a lot of struggles as a Ummah. For most things, we couldn’t do anything but make Dua. But we didn’t want to stop there. We wanted to do at least something within our abilities. So, we took a mission to build an app that solves our problem at that time, building a Bengali word-by-word app that is good.
Back then, the Islamic apps were either paid or not good. We wanted to challenge that too. We wanted to have a beautiful and performant app with a lot to offer, while being completely free with no ads.
The Foundation
After three years, we accumulated more than 200 thousands downloads and a portfolio of 7+ apps. Brother Araf and a few others were helping us with customer support, marketing and all the different things that were needed to run the operations.
Our users were loving our apps. The Quran app was the flagship app. We got really good reach in Indonesia, along with India, Bangladesh, even in the US and the UK. Our Dua and Zikr app was loved by thousands in Bangladesh. The Hadith, Muslim Scholars, and Islamic Quiz were all doing well, too.
But we had a problem.
We were getting busy with our lives, as we had to give time to our day jobs and family. The projects were getting ignored. There were a massive pile of user requests that we couldn’t just handle with our few volunteer hours.
So we decided to register as a charity and raise funds. Why did we choose a non-profit model over a regular business? That’s a story for another day. With the help of brother Riasat Islam (he’s been with us since 2016) and a few others, we registered an NPO charity in the UK.
And after doing a very small fundraiser campaign during Ramadan, we hired our first employee in 2018, Alhamdulillah.
The Commitment
We had our foundation, we’re raising money [little by little], and we have a team of 5 on the foundation team. 3 people on a salary, and several brothers and sisters supporting us voluntarily. But it wasn’t still making it. I was busy with my day job, brother Nabil and others were pushing the team forward as much as they could.
After a lot of thinking and Mashwara, I decided to join full-time, leaving my job as a Software Engineer. And right after that, within a year, 2 other members of the founding team joined as well (brother Araf and Zunaid). We shifted our focus towards building the team and the process.
We took a leap of faith with Tawaqqul on Allah and made a commitment to build the organisation.
The Growth
The past few years have been a massive roller coaster for us. Not only have we scaled our team from 3 to 40+ people, but we’ve also had significant growth and maturity of our products.
We now have accumulated 15M+ downloads with all of our apps.
During this period, we organised ourselves with the help of MRDF and other well-wishers. We set our core vision for the products. We had to discontinue some of the products so that we could focus on the others. After realising we need to invest in research and development and improve our content, we established our R&D and Content teams. After 10 years, we’ve finally done a rebrand of our organisation.
Along with it, we also started supporting other initiatives with our skills and expertise, as well as supporting our mission financially.
Now we’re, by the blessings of Allah, in a stronger position to carry our mission forward and do something for the Ummah.
The future
We are not an average tech company; we’re here with a mission. We don’t just keep making whatever Islamic apps we can make. We constantly analyse and evaluate ourselves so that we can be on the right track. We ask Allah (SWT) to keep us firm on our feet.
The Ummah is going through severe torment and difficulty. While some of us lead secure and fulfilling lives, our brothers and sisters pass the days with only dry bread to eat. This is happening in front of the whole world. You can’t describe the helplessness of someone when their brothers and sisters forsake them and leave them to die in rubble.
We want to have an impact, even if it’s small.
We are vigilant in finding the right problem to solve and equally committed to solving it well. If we can stick to our mission of helping Muslims better understand Islam with strong values and an uncompromising attitude, we might become an Ummah that Allah is pleased with, an Ummah which is bringing itself closer to Allah. We envision a day…
…a day when every Muslim can fully comprehend and act upon the Imam’s words at the mosque. This vision guides everything we do.
Remarks
Before closing, I want you to watch our podcast on how we reached 10M+ downloads over the years.
Also, you’ll find our 10th anniversary magazine available here for everyone.
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