The digital infrastructure of Kurdistan, and the bridge to its diaspora.
Pre-seed · YC Post-Money SAFE · $6.5M cap · kurdify.app
Kavalsia Inc. · July 2026 · Private and confidential
We hold the data on Kurdish businesses everywhere. Inside Kurdistan the platform is Kurdify; for Kurds outside, across Canada, the US, and Europe, it is KurdConnect. On top of that data we are building the platform and digital infrastructure Kurds have never had.
10,500+ scraped and enriched businesses, growing continuously at near-zero cost: every business with its own page, its Google reviews, and complete information. One engine serving the homeland and the diaspora.
Behind Kurdify stands Kavalsia, our marketing agency: 50+ business clients and over $100M in marketing and development spend for US, UK, and Canadian companies. That muscle now points at Kurdistan.
The latest features and technology we have built for businesses since 2020, given free to people and merchants. Offers and promotions (the part Groupon proved) run on our points economy, and a bank partnership eventually turns points into money moving home.
There is no Yelp in Kurdistan. Google Maps coverage is thin, unverified, and not in Kurdish. Yelp and TripAdvisor do not operate in Iraq at all. Stripe and PayPal do not either.
Local commerce runs through Facebook posts and WhatsApp groups: unstructured, unsearchable, no trust layer. Finding a reliable business is word of mouth.
Millions of Kurds in Europe and North America cannot find their community locally or send business, travel, and property money home through any structured rail.
200,000+ SMBs in the Kurdistan Region have no way to be found, verified, or paid online. The ad money they spend goes to Facebook with no local relevance.
Kurdify is the trusted directory, the loyalty economy, and the payment rails for a market global platforms skipped, built in the language people actually speak: Sorani first, with Kurmanji, Arabic, and English.
10,500+ listings across 15 categories, quality-ranked, city and category filters, Sorani, Kurmanji, Arabic, and English.
Points for signups, reviews, referrals, and claims; leaderboard of real top reviewers; coupons with QR redemption.
Claim flow, services, plans, sponsored placements, ad performance stats, payment sheet with receipt proof.
One dashboard runs the whole platform: payments queue, moderation, pricing, feature gates, live site control.
Create free or paid events, sell tickets, organizer scan and check-in. Verified end to end.
Text and voice answers in Sorani at /ask, backed by the directory's structured data.
Multi-tenant AI agent businesses subscribe to; each client gets its own number, brain, and voice.
KurdConnect: the same engine serving Kurdish-owned businesses in Canada, the US, and Europe.
FIB, ZainCash, crypto, and international cards are wired with a manual-confirmation payments queue. Pre-revenue today; first paying businesses at Erbil launch.
Accounts, moderation, claims, plans, placements, ticketing, bots, and three dashboards, all live and tested end to end.
An on-the-ground partner in Erbil works directly with business owners; visibility, trust, and diaspora reach are their top asks.
Kurds are the wedge: a 40M+ nation with no incumbent, a founder inside the community, and data acquisition already solved. The long-term product is the playbook itself.
| Revenue line | Price | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Business subscription plans | from $450/year | Built, rails live |
| Sponsored placements (homepage, directory, search) | $500 to $1,300 per slot | Built, rails live |
| Paid business setup (concierge listing) | $280 one-time | Built, rails live |
| Banner and lead packages, website services | $99 to $1,000 | Built, rails live |
| WhatsApp AI agent subscription (per business) | monthly SaaS | Built, multi-tenant |
| Events ticketing fees | % of paid tickets | Ticketing shipped |
| Diaspora commerce lane (travel, real estate, gifting) | transaction take | Roadmap |
Consumers stay free. The points-to-coupon loyalty loop, the offers-and-promotions engine Groupon proved, drives foot traffic that pulls businesses onto paid plans without burning them on margin.
Smartphone penetration in the KRI is near-universal while commerce is still on Facebook. Local fintech rails (FIB, ZainCash) just made online payment possible without Stripe. AI collapsed the cost of building for a "small" language: Kurdish-first UX is finally economical. No incumbent has moved.
Kurdish founder living the problem from both sides, based in Toronto with a ground partner in Erbil. A developer since a young age, now full-stack: Kavalsia's AI-accelerated Nexus engineering system let one founder ship a team's worth of product in months, and that velocity is repeatable on every next vertical. Behind him, Kavalsia the agency: 50+ businesses served and over $100M in marketing and development spend for US, UK, and Canadian companies.
Kurdish-first is not a translation layer; it is why people trust the platform.
We built the rails Stripe never will. That is a real barrier to entry.
Our pipeline builds and enriches a city for close to zero, overnight.
| Kurdify | Google Maps | Yelp / TripAdvisor | Facebook groups | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operates in Kurdistan, Iraq | Yes, built for it | Thin, unverified | Does not operate | Yes, unstructured |
| Kurdish (Sorani + Kurmanji) UX | Native, RTL-first | No | No | User-generated only |
| Verification and trust layer | Yes | No | No | No |
| Local payments (FIB, ZainCash) | Live | No | No | No |
| Diaspora bridge | KurdConnect | No | No | Fragmented |
The moat compounds: proprietary enriched data, verified-business trust, local payment integration, and a two-sided loyalty loop that raises switching costs every month.
| Use of funds · 18 months | Allocation |
|---|---|
| Go-to-market: Erbil and Sulaymaniyah launch, ground sales team, ads | 35% |
| Product: mobile apps, credit economy, diaspora commerce lane | 30% |
| First hires: KRI sales lead, community manager, support | 20% |
| Legal, entity setup, compliance | 8% |
| Infrastructure and reserve | 7% |
Valuation cap only, no discount. No board seats. Pro-rata rights for cheques of $50,000 and up. Minimum cheque $10,000. Rolling close.
Public launch in 2 cities, 400+ paying businesses, live consumer loyalty loop, mobile apps shipped, and a seed-ready revenue line within 18 months.
Scrape the businesses. Win trust with verification and free value. Monetize with local rails and the offers engine. Then partner with a bank so points move real money: a Kurd abroad tops up, and it is spent in Kurdistan, on a meal, a car, or a home. Repeat the playbook for every nationality the big platforms forgot.
[email protected] · kurdify.app · Toronto and Erbil