Every CRM you've used was built for a different era — when software's job was to remember, and yours was to do. You type the notes. You move the deals. You write the follow-ups. You feed the database, and the database feeds you a to-do list.
Now every CRM is racing to add AI. Look closely and it's almost always the same thing: an assistant in one corner that summarises a note here, rewords an email there. The work is still yours.
We think the whole model is backwards. So we started from four principles instead.
AI should do the work, not assist it.
A writing assistant bolted onto a database saves you minutes. That isn’t the revolution — it’s a nicer keyboard. In Yalla, the AI answers the customer, books the appointment, writes the campaign and moves the deal. You approve; it executes.
AI should go wide.
The real question for any CRM now is how wide the AI can go — because every surface it can’t touch is still a job on your plate. One Brain runs across your inbox, your autonomous sales and booking agents, your content and video, your broadcasts, your pipeline and your reporting.
It should feel as simple as a WhatsApp message.
We build for the markets we know best — the Middle East first, Southeast Asia alongside it — where deals happen on chat, and where nobody has an IT department. If a feature needs a manual, we redesign it.
It should compound.
Because it’s one AI and not ten bolt-ons, everything it learns flows everywhere: the agent that answers a customer knows your products, your FAQs, your calendar and your pipeline. And every year the AI takes on more of the work — an upgrade your business gets automatically.
We're Rashta and Zak. We've spent years running businesses across the UK, Dubai and Malaysia — and years watching smart, hard-working owners drown in WhatsApp messages, social posts and forgotten leads, paying agencies thousands a month and still doing half the work themselves.
Rashta spent 10+ years in marketing strategy with businesses across the Middle East and Southeast Asia; Zak built and sold software in London. Together we run Yalla for clinics, real estate and owner-run businesses across the Middle East and Southeast Asia — and for teams as far as the UK and the US.
We're not for everyone. If you have 50+ staff and an IT department, you don't need us. But if you run your business on chat and you're tired of doing the work your software should be doing — we built Yalla for you.
Offices
- United Kingdom
- United Arab Emirates
- United States