Data-Driven Innovation Fuels Muslim Pro’s Global Presence

Faith-based app Muslim Pro has transformed from a simple prayer time utility tool into a comprehensive digital platform serving over 170 million users worldwide. But don’t call it an overnight success, says its creator.

“Muslim Pro was launched in 2010 to provide accurate prayer times for Muslims all over the world where it’s not easily accessible,” explains Nafees Khundker, Muslim Pro’s CEO and group managing director. “People in the West, they’re the ones who needed it most because over there you didn’t have mosques all over the place, right? It was like a companion for any Muslim to understand when the prayer times are.”

From there, Muslim Pro’s leadership team recognized opportunities to expand beyond their initial value proposition. “We expanded from being just a utility app, to providing additional services,” Khundker says. “Often, Muslims will probably refer to the Quran for questions, answers, and to try to understand the Quran.”

By expanding into educational content, multilingual Quran translations, and most recently AI-powered religious information, Muslim Pro has positioned itself as an indispensable resource for its target market.

“Now we have a new vision, which is to be the digital home for all things Muslim, combining faith, technology, and also the whole Muslim lifestyle. Whatever a Muslim needs in their daily life, we want to be there to provide those services,” says Khundker.

Leveraging Data, Feedback To Drive Innovation

What sets Muslim Pro apart from competitors is its relentless focus on user feedback to inform product development. “We actually get a lot of feedback, both positive and negative. We monitor it and use it to inform our improvements,” Khundker explains.

Those improvements now include some of the app’s most popular features, including educational tools and content that helps users deepen their understanding of Islam. The company has also leveraged technological innovation, launching an AI-powered chatbot in 2023.

“We call it Ask AiDeen, which is a bot that can handle any questions anyone has regarding Islam,” notes Khundker.

Localization and Personalization

One of the most impressive aspects of Muslim Pro’s growth is its global reach. Despite initial expectations that the app would primarily appeal to users in Southeast Asia, it found unexpected success in Western markets before expanding its presence in Muslim-majority countries.

“Although it was launched from Singapore and initially the thoughts were people in Southeast Asia would probably pick it up most because you have a lot of Muslims here, but it was very quickly accepted in the Western world,” Khundker shares.

“You can actually read the Quran in more than 60 languages in the platform today,” says Khundker.

The app is as popular in Muslim-majority countries like Indonesia as it is in Muslim minority countries, for different reasons, Khundker notes. “If you take it, Indonesia is the largest Muslim-populated country in the world.”

The company has also identified important demographic trends that shape its product strategy. “The biggest trend we see and which is probably logical, is that the younger tech-savvy Muslims are the ones who are using it the most,” explains Khundker. “I would say more than 50% of our users would be between 18 and 34 years old, and it’s being increasingly used for educational purposes.”

Building A Community-Driven Product Experience

Muslim Pro continues to keep a trained eye on its community to dictate its next areas of growth.

“We are focusing on the community aspect now where we feel that people all over the world want to connect with each other digitally with all these services,” Khundker explains.

Diversifying Revenue Streams Through Vertical Integration

Muslim Pro has also begun expanding beyond digital content to include services directly related to Islamic practices.

“End of last year we launched our first Umrah travel services. Most of the Muslims would want to go to Mecca and Medina and perform their Umrah services,” Khundker explains.

But the true measure of Muslim Pro’s success isn’t just in its impressive download numbers, but in the meaningful impact it has on users’ lives. Khundker shares one particularly powerful example:

“I would want to highlight one of the stories from last year where… This person was actually a revert from somewhere in Europe. I think she sent a message to our customer service and really, really said how Muslim Pro has changed her life, where she used it on a daily basis to read and understand the Quran, to really get back and find more context in what Islam is and how to actually practice Islam.”

He adds, “This person’s Islamic journey actually started with Muslim Pro, where she can easily have the whole Quran on her app, carried around, and look at it anytime, or any Islamic question that she had straight away came from that.”