We are kicking off a second season of our industry interviews in our first Incongruent Plus episode of the new term. Here, the co-founder of Lock & Stock, Hussain Ali, chats with our Arjun and Samira sharing a number of hints and tips of how to save - and also, how to reach the top of the Lock & Stock Leaderboard.
Thank you so much Hussain for sharing, and you can download Lock & Stock from all major App stores.
We are kicking off a second season of our industry interviews in our first Incongruent Plus episode of the new term. Here, the co-founder of Lock & Stock, Hussain Ali, chats with our Arjun and Samira sharing a number of hints and tips of how to save - and also, how to reach the top of the Lock & Stock Leaderboard.
Thank you so much Hussain for sharing, and you can download Lock & Stock from all major App stores.
Hey guys, welcome to a brand new season and a brand new episode of the Incongruent Plus. So I'm your host Arjun Radeesh, and I'm accompanied with my dear own co host, Samira, and this has been after a very long time. Like I was still having my shows up but Samira is coming back after a one month break from the mikes. And then we have our own guests. So Samira, why not introduce him?
Samira:Yes. So today, we have a very, very special guest with us, Hussain Ali. He is the CO owner and Chief Marketing Officer of Lock & Stock, a student based app that helps students save money and earn rewards such as offers and discounts on all your favourite brands in the simplest ways possible. So Hussein, welcome. We are so pleased to have you here. And how have you been doing?
Hussain Ali:Yeah, I've been doing great. Thank you, Arjun. So here. Thank you for the kind introduction. And thank you so much for having me. We're super excited to speak to you guys. I've heard about your podcast through the grapevine for a while I know it's time you should get in touch and collaborate.
Arjun:Okay, fantastic. So guys who don't know lock in stock, I'm going to say this locking stock is basically an app meant for students. Okay. I remember like when locking stock started back, like when I was in 11th, if I'm not wrong, like that time,
Hussain Ali:It's actually three years and six days ago.
Arjun:You just celebrated your birthday. Happy birthday Lock & Stock!
Hussain Ali:Thank you, we just celebrated our third biorthday about a week ago.
Arjun:Fantastic. Congratulations. So basically, how is this basically the idea of Lock & Stock came up? That basically we want to know everything that who walked where how all these things we need to know.
Hussain Ali:Absolutely. So yeah, I work on the marketing side of things at Lock & Stock. We actually are founders, Craig and Ian Ferndandes. So Craig, actually, Craig and I have been friends for a while since going to school together, and then moving to ths space to pursue a degree in economics at the University of Iowa. And the story is that he he was in class one day. He was WhatsApping a bunch of us in Dubai, I think, WhatsApping his Dad and all of us noticed literally went like... "man, aren't you supposed to be in class, why are you so active on WhatsApp?" And his response is "Yeah, I am in class, but it's kind of boring." Which is the... is the case for a lot of students very easy to get bored very easily, you can always get distracted. And then you know, then he comes back to Dubai. And you know, we had a conversation about that moment where he realises that you're just like, just like him 30 or 40, or 50 of his classmates were also distracted by their phones, by their tablets, laptops, or some digital device.... And, you know, we know, we thought we thought to ourselves, I was also in university back then I went to the University of Wollongong. And initially, I was a yeah man, honestly, I spent about maybe, you know, a quarter of my time on a phone, because it's very easy to get bored and very easy to get distracted. And then, you know, we thought, you know, what, what, what can be done to change this, the first question that we asked ourselves that how many students not just in the UAE but from around the world are just like us, right? And more than every student around the world is the same. What they do is the same what they like is pretty much the same. So we thought, you know what, let's let's do something about this problem. Let's try and see if we can find a way to combat smartphone addiction among students. It's a very serious problem especially among fifteens, 16 17, 18 year olds, and while you're ... at least in UAE, and some parts of the world... in where schools would not really allow you to have phones in class, universities, there's nothing professors can do, or the management can't enforces these rules. So we thought you know, just telling asking people to keep off their phone won't be enough, right? These are millennials and the Gen Z, Gen Gen Z's of the world. And they need to have ... they need to be given a reason to perform our tasks as big as giving up your phone for some time. Right. That's when the offers platform was introduced. Right. So that was the incentive that we gave students listen Lock your phone, for some time, and generate rewards, you know, buy one get one at this cinema, buy one get one at this restaurant, water parks, etc, etc, a whole bunch of things. And that's when that's really when Lock & Stock took off. This is something that that the company believes a lot, Lock & Stock is a company built by students for students. So everything we do is student centric, everything we do, is solving a problem for students. And over over time, we sort of realised that students really mainly have three problems, three major problems that they deal with. Number one, is they don't have money. Let's be honest almost everyone's on allowance by by a parent or your fixed student budget, you can't spend a lot of money as a student. So that's where the offers platform came in just to help them as you said yourself, save them some money. Another another problem students, especially in the UAE have is that they don't have enough they don't have access to or they don't have enough internship, internships and jobs opportunities. That's where we introduced a job platform to solve that problem as well. So you know, we got a few of our corporate partners on board, asked them if they will would like to hire student interns, or fresh graduates for entry level positions. So that's going to be we launched the jobs platform. And I think this is a problem with every student around the world, that the university tuition is very, very expensive, right? Unless you're a super smart student, and you have 100% scholarship coming your way. University tuition is very, very expensive. And we then launched a scholarship platform so partnering with a few universities, with most universities actually in the UAE, to provide scholarships and mainly guidance, you know university guidance to the students to pick and choose the best university that suits them. You know, for the degree that they want to pursue.
Arjun:law like I I did love the things that you guys did during lockdown, okay, like, allowing us to lock phones from our houses. Good point, I did love that.
Hussain Ali:Absolutely the fundamental of the application was really our main brand purpose was to help students keep off their phones, now we thought to ourselves, yes, it's very important that they stay away from their phones in class, because, I mean, you got to pay attention in class, but you know, with online learning, and just students have a lot more time, it's very easy for them to get distracted, when they don't have much to do and that was really our mission, is to, you know, I mean, it's fine. Even if you're home, you're watching Netflix, that's okay, stay off your phone, don't be distracted by what's going on in the world. Stay off your phone and focus on doing things that you love. And that's really what we adapted to.
Arjun:It's pretty interesting like okay, to through the lock down to you found an opportunity and got to increase the number of people using..
Hussain Ali:Just like a lot of other businesses in the country, we also had to sort of adapt to the new normal for us, especially with our, you know Lock & Stock being so student centric, and, students not going to universities in schools anymore, it was a little bit of a shock for us in the beginning. So it meant putting in a lot more hours putting in a lot more work. But, you know, touch wood we survived we made it through and I think that gave everybody an opportunity. In fact, we actually g rew during during this lockdown period, a lot of projects that we we had put off because you know our because the focus before you know pre pandemic was so much so much different. And you know, when when everything so when not aware before, yo this is a great opportunity for us to work on things that we we probably would have worked on in 2021 or 2022. So I think in that sense a lot of new stuff came about.
Arjun:So now as of now you get scholarships to how much universities like is it only in UAE? Or is it around the world? How's it?
Hussain Ali:When we started off it was just the UAE we actually just had chosen universities on board...
Arjun Radeesh:OK...
Hussain Ali:And you know, once the application grew and once we sort of perfected the the model of advertising the universities on our platform. We then reach out to other universities, internatinal universities. As of today, we have over 400-500 universities from around the world, so you have universities from the UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, India, there's a university from Malaysia as well. So you name it, countries around the world, most likely will find a university or application world domination is what we are looking at!
Arjun Radeesh:Oh, man, that's such an ambitious plan.
Samira:Now, let's backtrack a little bit going to the process of developing the company, starting with your friend messaging you out of class at the University of Iowa, correct? To actually finalising the outline of the company or even launching it, you know, that moment when you were like, okay, we found something that's incredible. How long did that process take?
Hussain Ali:So it actually took less than a year. February of 2017 we started planning out and started developing the application. And we I develop it myself, but we had we really it was the the idea was to just put together a team to, to, you know, put together the application, the business plan, the marketing plan, you know, how things are going to work, especially in the UAE, it's a bit tedious. You know, there's a lot of regulation with your licence stuff like that, you have to register and stuff, of all that all that and that's Feb 2017. Cut to September when the initial product was valuable. We actually spent a few months going to a few brands before we launched officially, on the application, why when we launch. So 24 brands, I think was a number, twentyfour brands that were on board with about 30 different offers on the platform when we launched what we really worked on was putting a good team together to be able to take this forward... without, without the the work from each individual on the team, the company wouldn't have gone to do it. So. So it's credit to do every single person who's working on the team. Their work has really gotten us to where we are,
Samira:And that must have felt incredibly great, especially that this is something that was created by students for students. And so how did it feel when it finally came together into what it is?
Hussain Ali:The emotion is off course, everyone was super excited. We were also a little bit nervous we didn't really know how people would receive, how would you react? If we would even get acknowledged even if you just single download? You know, that's that as an entrepreneur is the first fear that they have, you know, fear of failure. You know, all that aside. We were like we are going in, we are going in, let's do this and let's do thisright. And we did, and we did like how. So really a lot of excitement, a lot of nervousness, fear of failing, but we know we just battled through it. So that's really how we were feeling. And you know, Lock & Stock. So I keep saying this is a it's a company for students by students. And it's also come to this point, because of students, right we there is, there is no amount of you know, gratitude, which is enough to be given to our students that has fast forwarded us in the last few years. Even the brand ambassadors, the student brand ambassadors that first joined the company since day one, right? Just working day in day out, spreading awareness on their respective campuses, and it's absolutely incredible the amount of response and the amount of support that we got from students from the student community it is fantastic. So kudos to them.
Arjun Radeesh:That's amazing. So how would you like to say in terms of let's say some money saving tips, like you told before? Okay, money, saving, what money spending is such a big thing now with students? So do you have any advice on saving
Hussain Ali:You know it is very different when you are a student money when somebody's living off of your parents or money or their from. When you grow up a little bit and start making your own money, you really start to realise the value of that money that you have been spending for spending for all your life. That will organically just come to you. You know, when it's when it's your own money, you wouldn't really want to waste a lot of it. That's how I saw it. But really, the biggest thing is, no matter how much money you have always try to live under your means. And also always be ready for an emergency or a rainy day. Actually, how do you guys save money? What do you guys do as students?
Arjun Radeesh:Oh, so normally what I have is like Okay, before I'm getting a wallet itself. I used to what put coins in the money boxs, the typical Dubai child does it any Dubai kid that was not having a money box. I'll be like, I'll be pretty surprised.
Hussain Ali:Yeah, I used to do that too. Whatever change I have any change, it always goes into this money box Honestly, it's really about how you plan.
Arjun Radeesh:Yeah, definitely it's like, Okay, my parents are by profession, they are accountants. So already they have injected things regarding saving money.
Samira:That's how he's much luckier than most of us.
Arjun Radeesh:Okay, so we're gonna go on, what's your thing about money saving.
Samira:I've been very grateful to have parents who from a very young age taught me how to plan my finances, and how to spend and I've actually been almost entirely financially independent for quite some time now. And honestly, it's true. Once you actually start earning your own money, you really, truly understand the value of it, and how difficult it is to work for every penny. And so it's just important to plan each month each week. And I especially I have this special financial journal where I keep track of my spending, and try to kind of plan for the future plan ahead and make sure I'm not in too much trouble or that I'm not just going around spending all my paychecks on food. So yeah.
Hussain Ali:Yeah, awesome. The only thing I would spend all the money on is food....
Samira:Also, going back to a conversation we had myself in Arjun, I think Arjun would really want to know, if you can tell us how to get to the top of the leaderboard.
Arjun Radeesh:Yes, please. I am very curious to know that I'm very curious to know that
Hussain Ali:It's a question we get very often so really, apart from lock your phones... what you need to do you need to bring your friends to the Lock & Stock App and encourage them right to lock their phones as well. As long as your friend is locking their phone talking, you will also get minutes added to your time. That's how you compete and then win.
Arjun Radeesh:Wow. Wow. Samira, please take my promo code. Okay, I need points!
Hussain Ali:Why we encourage people to stay away from your phone may be the only people that can convince you to do something are your friends
Arjun Radeesh:Okay, so thank you so much for sending or taking your time coming up and talking to us. So guys out there, download Lock & Stock. ood luck on future endeavours, e are waiting to listen that xciting news of Lock & Stock g ing to other countries. So g od luck.