Kuwait Times

Published Date: February 13, 2009
By Munifah Akasha, Staff writer

It all started with a scanner, a handful of papers and an active blog. Fast forward a few years and it's an environmentally conscious not-for-profit website that caters to the benefit of the community. The Kuwait Paper Dump is "a place where scraps of paper can be stored digitally, 'dumped', so that you or anybody else can resort to them for or reference or information," as is described on their about page. It's an online 'yellow pages' to everything that is going on in Kuwait, from events, to commercial d
eals, to the newest merchandise, even to food. Moreover, they always show up first in a Google search. That must take a certain amount of hard work and an increasingly growing popularity. Plus, 30,000 hits a month is impressive benchmark to say the least.

A story of creation

The Kuwait Times sat down with the two entrepreneurs, Abdulla Imad and Salem Marafi - behind the Kuwait Paper Dump website, asked them everything about the Kuwait Paper Dump - a website for the people, by the people. "I used to collect papers and leaflets, newspaper cut-outs, magazine cut-outs because I wanted to buy a computer back in the day and computer prices fluctuate really quickly because they have a high depreciation rate, and I wanted to buy the right computer at the right time," smiled Abdulla Im
ad, speaking of the birth of www.kuwaitpaperdump.com.

One day, Imad realized that he had a huge folder of leaflets and cut outs. "I thought: Why don't I put all these leaflets online? So that I can search for them when I need them and I can save myself from the hassle of keeping them in my drawer. By then I had already bought myself a computer, so then I was looking at the prices of printers and screens. I was doing it out of habit, or just in case I wanted to buy something, I would have all the prices so that I can compare. The leaflets also contained the co
mpanies' telephone numbers, which was great if I needed to contact them," he says.

Entry in the blogosphere

Imad, also a blogger, decided to create a blog specifically designed for these leaflets in 2006. Blogs, he explained enthusiastically, are free, can hold a lot of space, and can be used by a large number of people. "Sometimes I would Google something and not find out anything about it, I would have a really hard time finding any information. So, when I got hold of the names of the companies and their telephone numbers, I put them all on the site as well," Imad noted.

Like most Kuwaiti men, Imad and Marafi would frequent diwaniyas regularly. "We wouldn't know what to order for dinner, or we didn't know what the menu was, so I started adding food to the website, I would collect menus and put them up. Suddenly, the website became popular and traffic increased," Imad beamed.

Now, readers can even contribute and send in their own papers. "I want people to dump their own leaflets; this way we can cover everything because this is a community website, an interactive platform, where people can contribute in the building of the website." In fact, the website has received so much support from fellow bloggers, who seemed to adopt the site immediately. The Kuwait Paper Dump was featured on q8igg.com, a localized digg.com - an internet social bookmark. "The support coming in from the bl
ogosphere is ridiculous, especially from Ansam, the Breakfast Blog, Intlxpatr, Jewaira, Mark, Patrick Seeman, and Wer3y," Marafi pointed out.

A co-venture affair

It wasn't long before Salem Marafi came into the picture, bringing with him his expertise in both the business aspect and the technological developmental aspect. Marafi re-hauled the website and made it more user-friendly. "I was doing this for free, as a hobby. Salem said let's get a paid server, a domain name and do it almost commercially," Imad explained, adding that at first he was hesitant because he was not making money off it and therefore did not want to invest too much into it. Marafi had a differ
ent outlook, and was in search of various opportunities for the website, especially since it is a website that targets the Kuwaiti youth as it's demographic.

Green is hitting Kuwait big time. We are seeing a lot of corporate people going for green. NBK's 'Think Twice' environmental campaign and Green Target Company (GTC) now have a company where they recycle paper, as well as Tarsheed. GTC are doing a great job, actually," Marafi pointed out, explaining that the Kuwait Paper Dump has a huge potential in playing a role in keeping Kuwait green and minimizing paper waste, as the website can become the go-for-all in the leaflet distributing business. Instead of di
stributing leaflets, just send them over to the Paper Dump.

Phone-tastic

The Kuwait Paper Dump features a phonebook link, which makes people's lives easier by providing them with the phone numbers of all the companies featured on the website. They also have a random feature. It's a smart feature because if the user is the main page and they choose the random feature they will get a random category, but if the user is on a specific category and they choose the random feature, they get a random post within that same category. There are so many other handy features that make the u
ser's life so much easier, such as bookmarks.

I honestly think that the Kuwait Paper Dump is the best application made for Kuwait," one of the website's users stated.