Muslim Tech Fest returns to London as startups go head-to-head
Co-founder Arfah Farooq says the event will be the biggest yet with 35 new firms competing for £30,000 of investment
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Muslim-run startups specialising in everything from treating depression to memorising the Qur’an will compete for a £30,000 prize at this month’s third Muslim Tech Fest in west London.
Organisers say they expect more than 1,800 guests at the event, which runs across three floors at the Novotel London West in Hammersmith on 21 June. It will bring together Muslim tech entrepreneurs, developers and investors from sectors including science, health and media.
Arfah Farooq and Zahid Mahmood hatched the idea for Muslim Tech Fest, which launched in 2023, after meeting at Muslamic Makers — an after-work networking event for Muslims in tech originally set up by Farooq in 2016.
“It came out of my own experiences of navigating the tech scene and not seeing representation,” Farooq said.
“When I met Zahid through Muslamic Makers, he was like: ‘I think what you’re doing is great but it could be much bigger.’ He’s a technologist, I’m a community builder, and we just knew that there was amazing talent in our community that was not being seen.”
This year’s festival will host more than 40 exhibitors and more than 50 speakers, including Zubair Junjunia, founder of ZNotes — an online platform intended to address inequalities in education by letting millions of students globally share revision notes and other learning resources.
Other speakers include Ahmed Khalifa, who founded PurpleByte — a consultancy business dedicated to making the internet more accessible, inspired by his own experiences navigating online barriers as a deaf person — as well as Arda Awais, co-founder of creative studio Identity 2.0, and Adil Abbuthalha, founder of Boycat. The shopping app helps users find ethically produced goods, particularly when it comes to avoiding companies accused of complicity in Israel’s attacks on Gaza.
“This year, we’ve gone bigger over three floors, more sponsors, more startup expos, round tables, workshops,” said Farooq. “We’ve really delved deeper. Our community is so diverse in terms of interests, so we’ve devised a programme where people can pick and choose what fits best for them and what’s most valuable for them.”
Early stage tech startups will also have the chance to compete for a £30,000 funding prize to help them grow their business. Finalists chosen from a shortlist of 35 competitors will pitch on stage to judges who will be rating their ideas.
“We were quite fortunate to receive a lot of different types of ideas,” said Farooq. “It was meant to be a shortlist of 25 but it ended up being 35 because it was so hard.”
Among the contenders is Dr Nawal Yousaf, founder of Fitra Health — a digital therapeutic platform designed to support the treatment of depression and address some of the key challenges faced by clinicians and patients. Entrepreneur Nima Akram will also be hoping to pitch NewsCord — a platform that aims to use AI to publish data-driven reports on biased news coverage.
Other hopefuls for the funding include Kiitab App and Quranlingo, both apps to help people learn the Qur’an.
“The thing that I most look forward to is what actually happens after the day is over, because that’s when the relationships are formed,” said Farooq. “That’s when people might have met their investor, their co-founder, or maybe they’ve found somebody who could give them a job. For me that’s the bit that I look forward to the most — the impactful stories that follow.”
