Why we built this
Walk into any duka in Dar es Salaam and you'll see the same thing: a worn notebook tracking who owes what, a calculator for every sale, and a phone full of M-Pesa confirmation screenshots. These are not unsophisticated businesses — they're sophisticated traders running on tools that weren't built for them.
Ziada was built to change that. A single platform that works offline, speaks Swahili, accepts the payments Tanzanians actually use, and now has an AI that answers questions about your specific store — not a generic chatbot, but one grounded in your sales, your stock, and your customers. We built it in Dar es Salaam, tested it in dukas across 6 regions, and we're still improving it every week based on what traders tell us.
The cofounders
Ziada is a product of two companies working as one
Engineering and design built under one roof — different disciplines, one product, one mission.
Camel Tech builds the backend, API, data layer and all platform infrastructure behind Ziada. The team focuses on reliability, offline-first architecture, and scaling for the African mobile-first context.
Camel Creatives owns the Ziada product design, marketing, and how merchants experience the platform — from first click to daily use. The team believes that good design is the highest form of respect for the user's time.
What we build around
Offline-first
Your shop doesn't stop when the internet does. Every feature works without a connection — syncing happens in the background when connectivity returns. This isn't a fallback mode, it's the default.
Swahili-first
Built for how merchants actually talk. The AI answers in Swahili. The interface uses terms traders know. Language isn't an afterthought — it's baked into the core of every feature.
Merchant-first
Every feature in Ziada was driven by a real trader's pain point. We spend time in dukas, supermarkets, and pharmacies. We don't build features because they're interesting — we build them because traders need them.
Based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
We love hearing from merchants, partners and anyone building in the East African retail space.