Omani duo creates country’s first digital identity platform

Omani duo creates country’s first digital identity platform

Muscat – Techies Ahmed al Marjeby and Mahmood al Lawati have created a platform, called Nashid, to mitigate risks of identity fraud.

Marjeby, co-founder and CEO of Nashid, earlier founded two tech startups in the e-commerce and blockchain technologies, while Lawati, co-founder and CTO, has previous experience of founding a property tech startup.

As a team, they have technical and business expertise with a cumulative experience of over 12 years in tech startups, which helped them focus on creating digital identities for people utilised by enterprises for digital services.

In 2020, Marjeby found his online identity had been hacked – one among 2.5mn others whose identity had been stolen on the Internet. Since paper-based identity documents cannot be verified digitally, stolen identity data can be used to impersonate any individual for fraudulent activities.

But opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune and defeat. Nashid took shape a year after Marjeby’s identity was hacked following a conversation about digitising identities he had with Lawati at a coffee shop in Azaiba.

They have identified the missing ‘digital identity layer’ as being the problem of our times, where the use of paper-based identity documents creates manual workflows requiring in-person verifications. It is outdated, physically taxing, and