Penang, Malaysia – A local startup has created a marketplace app for Muslim friendly food in Malaysia, named Tempah. The app aims to connect Muslim chefs, whether home-based or in restaurants, with Muslim consumers.
Helping Muslim Women In Their Homes
Although similar apps such as Food Panda and Grab Food are popular in the Malaysian market, the Tempah app aims to empower Muslim women who are home-based cooks called chefs on the app) who are usually single moms, or stay-at-home moms, to earn more income with this platform. Currently, such home-based cooks or chefs are only marketing their products via Facebook groups or WhatsApp. As such, their marketing potential are somewhat limited.
Empowering Women by Women
Tempah app is started by a local Malaysian tech-based company in Penang and its founder is a lady, Ms. Farveen Fatimah Ibrahim, who wanted Muslim businesses and empower Muslim women to increase participation in businesses.
Benefits for Restaurants
Halal restaurants are also welcomed to join the Tempah app. The main benefit for chefs and restaurants to join the Tempah platform is that commission fees are only charged to the consumer, not the chefs or restaurants, as its main objective is to help food sellers, especially single moms who are home-based chefs, to earn more income.
Good Demand For The Newly Launched App
The Tempah app was only launched in August 2019 for Penang, and September 2019 for Kuala Lumpur, and to date has over 300 chefs and restaurants registered with the App and over 1,000 downloads. Consumers can order meal boxes, such as lunch and dinner sets from either restaurants or home chefs. In addition, consumers can also order cakes, cookies, tidbits such as ‘kerepek’, from home chefs on the Tempah app. This app is really timely given that the demand for Muslim-based products is increasing substantially in Malaysia. Their app was featured at the Digital Islamic Economy conference 2019 held in Kuala Lumpur.
Aiming For Shariah Compliance
Delivery of the food are made via the Tempah App and sent via their shariah-compliant delivery partners, such as Hantaq Delivery, in Penang. Tempah App also has its inhouse delivery riders as well. To download the Tempah app, or get more information, you can visit their website, avicenna.my.
Farah Ishak is a Content Writer at Halalop. She grew up in the United Kingdom where she obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Management. Later, she completed her MBA and held senior-level positions in Malaysian based MNC. She left the corporate world to be with her young kids. She is passionate about issues concerning Muslim women, Startups and Muslim businesses in general.
