Khuraim

Khuraim is a self-initiated Najdunes concept, not client work. We imagined a Riyadh startup building one tool for the people who run small businesses here: a bakery, a small contractor, a design studio, an online shop, each keeping their money straight across a spreadsheet, a banking app and a WhatsApp thread.

The brief we set ourselves: a name, an identity and an interface system for a product that answers the question every owner asks near month-end. After payroll and rent, what’s left in the account, and who still hasn’t paid?

Deliverables: an Arabic and Latin logo, type and colour, a bilingual marketing site for desktop and mobile, a web dashboard, a mobile app and a bilingual tax-invoice template. Every figure on every screen is sample data, and every screen is flagged as such.

This is desk research from public sources. We ran no interviews and no surveys, so nothing here describes what real users told us.

Small business is national policy. The corporate strategy of Monsha’at, the SME authority, restates the Vision 2030 goal of lifting the SME share of GDP from 20% to 35%.

Invoices are now data. ZATCA’s Detailed Guidelines for E-Invoicing say Phase 1 (generation) took effect on 4 December 2021 and Phase 2 (integration) rolls out in groups from 1 January 2023, each group notified at least six months ahead. ZATCA’s guideline on tax invoicing and records puts the standard VAT rate at 15%.

The riyal has a sign. The Saudi Press Agency reported its approval on 20 February 2025. Among the usage rules the Saudi Central Bank published, as reported by Arab News: the sign sits to the left of the number, with a space between them. Unicode 17.0 encodes it as U+20C1, but most fonts don’t draw it yet.

The field is crowded. The Financial Sector Development Program’s 2023 annual report counts 216 fintech companies operating in the Kingdom, against a target of 525 by 2030. A newcomer has to be recognisable at a glance.

The name is a place. Saudipedia describes Rawdat Khuraim as a basin about 100 km north-east of Riyadh, roughly 18 km long and 2.5 km wide, fed by three valleys from the east. It now lies inside the Imam Abdulaziz bin Mohammed Royal Reserve.

The idea comes from the name. A rawdah is a low basin where valley water gathers and the ground turns green after rain. Khuraim gathers what comes into a business and what goes out of it in one place, then shows what will be left in the weeks ahead.

Positioning: not a full accounting suite, but a daily tool for the owner. Plain words instead of accountant’s terms, and a clear question at the top of every screen, followed by the number that answers it.

The product has three streams, like the three valleys: invoices, collections and forecast. All of them feed one number, the expected balance at month-end, set on a thirteen-week timeline.

The tone is calm and direct. A late invoice shows in amber, not red, and every screen is designed in Arabic first, then mirrored in full for English.

The tax invoice is one document in both languages: both parties’ details and VAT numbers, the lines, VAT at 15%, the amount in words and a place for the QR code. Everything on it is sample data, and a watermark says so.

Khuraim reaches the owner through notifications in the phone’s language, and reaches the owner’s customers through a polite WhatsApp nudge with the invoice attached. The app icon is drawn to hold its own on a crowded home screen.