Riyadh (AFP) - Fizzing with boyish exuberance, Saudi programmer Zainalabdin Tawfiq could be mistaken for a college freshman, but the popularity of his "honesty" app has shone a spotlight on the conservative kingdom's nascent tech scene.
Tawfiq catapulted to fame when he took time out of his day job as a business analyst last year to develop an anonymous messaging tool called Sarahah -- honesty in Arabic -- that subsequently topped the charts for app downloads.
"Sarahah is the digital equivalent of an old-school suggestion box," 29-year-old Tawfiq told AFP, adding that it is built on the premise that stripping users of their identity promotes ruthless honesty.
"Feedback is the goal -- anonymous feedback."
The app has a frugal design and a simple prompt that encourages users to "leave a constructive message :)", with the recipient not allowed to reply but only share it on social media or block the sender.
Its mass appeal stems from the appetite in the Arab world -- notorious for online censorship -- for unfiltered platforms for expression, though Tawfiq said it has also gained a strong popularity in Western countries.
Such has been its power to knock down social barriers that obstruct free speech that one user described it as an app where you can "hit enter on comments you would have otherwise backspaced".
"The success story of Sarahah really proves that Saudi startups can achieve spectacular gains when properly supported," said Nawaf Alsahhaf, CEO of Badir, a government-backed technology incubator that helped Tawfiq.
"There truly is undeniable potential behind Saudi startups we currently incubate," he told AFP.
"It is clear oil's decline and entrepreneurship's rise are necessarily intertwined," the Beirut-based venture capital firm Leap Ventures wrote on its website last year, noting a new growth in disruptive tech innovations in the region.
A new breed of Saudi startups -- from an on-demand roadside assistance app called Morni to Hunger Station, a food ordering portal -- have recently drawn the attention of venture capitalists.
Sarahah has come under fire for being a troll magnet -- but Tawfiq said that problem was common to all major social media platforms.
It has also recently been accused of secretly harvesting the address books of users. Tawfiq rejected that claim and said he plans to remove Sarahah's address upload feature with the next update.
"I believe that even one case (of abuse) is actually too many," Tawfiq said. "I won't tell you how, but my aim is to make the job of misusers as difficult as possible."