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Four founders, and a corridor
that needs all four of them

One of us buys from Maghreb producers by hand every week. One has spent eight years building payment integrations inside a country with a non-convertible currency. One writes audit methodology for a living. One has controlled budgets where a single missing line costs millions. This niche asks for all four competences at once, and a competitor does not hire a team like that, it assembles one over years

4Founders, from Algeria and Morocco, the two countries carrying the goods flow
5Working languages across the corridor, including Darija
BarcelonaRegistered office, with operational presence in Madrid and Málaga
3Technologies covered by a filed patent application

To make the cross-border purchase of halal food as predictable as buying inside the EU: a vetted supplier, a confirmed certificate, protected settlement and a known delivery date, all in one interface

The name comes from the Arabic souq, the traditional market, joined to the English connect. It describes the business plainly: a digital market linking MENA producers with European buyers

The company came out of a frustration rather than a market study. Our COO runs a food wholesale business in Algeria and manages the whole operating cycle himself, from judging whether a producer is reliable to arguing over a minimum lot. The process the platform digitises is the process he performs by hand, which is why the product requirements were written from daily practice instead of from a survey

We chose Barcelona because that is where the demand and the goods meet. Catalonia holds the largest Muslim population in Spain in absolute terms, 694,046 people, and the city is the largest logistics hub on the Mediterranean coast and the natural point of entry for goods moving out of the Maghreb

The founding team

Each founder owns one edge of the transaction. Between them they cover the producer, the certificate, the payment and the numbers, which is the whole of what a cross-border order actually consists of

Abdelkader Ben
Chief executive and finance

Abdelkader Ben

Owns financial architecture, investor relations and the legal structure

More than twenty years of financial control inside international oil and gas groups, where the job is not accounting but controlling: knowing exactly where margin arises and which cost line consumes it

At REPSOL from 2014 to 2019, managing budgets in excess of EUR 100 million, together with AFEs, SAP pro formas, the supplier register and contract control. Since 2019 Drilling Cost Control Engineer at PTTEP, and earlier at SHELL, Petroceltic PLC and BHP Billiton

BSc International Business and Accounting, Royal Holloway, University of London. A platform running five revenue streams across four currency regimes needs someone who has already held that kind of complexity to account

REPSOLSHELLPTTEPBHP Billiton
Mechtoub Mohamed
Operations, supply and sales

Mechtoub Mohamed

Owns the supplier network and the commercial side

A practising wholesaler in the general food segment in Algeria, running the entire operating cycle of a trading business single-handed

Relationships with producers, judgement of their reliability, negotiation of prices, volumes and minimum lots, distribution to wholesale buyers and catering businesses, and management of the warehouse and stock turnover

His producer network forms the platform's opening supply and sets pricing policy through a working understanding of how the mark-up is really built. The operating model he runs by hand is the exact model the platform digitises

Producer networkWholesaleMinimum lotsStock turnover
Guellout Mohammed Nadhir
Technology

Guellout Mohammed Nadhir

Owns the product and the technical architecture

Routing settlement through the exchange controls of three countries is not solved by connecting a payment provider. It is solved by someone who spent eight years building payment integrations inside a non-convertible currency market

Since 2022 a Senior Backend Engineer at Yassir, the largest technology company in North Africa by capital raised, working on payment and logistics APIs, scaling payment infrastructure in a market with non-standard banking regulation, and integration with Algerian banks

Previously at Djezzy, on billing for an operator with more than 20 million subscribers, then at Mobilis and at BNA on online banking and interbank system integrations. Co-founder of an ed-tech startup between 2014 and 2016. Diplôme d'Ingénieur en Informatique, ESI Alger

YassirBNADjezzyESI Alger
Birouk Salima
Compliance and quality

Birouk Salima

Owns verification methodology and EU import compliance

Certificate verification is a methodological problem before it is a technical one: someone has to decide what counts as confirmation, which discrepancies between registers are acceptable, and on what criteria a supplier is admitted at all

Eight years in management systems and auditing. Since 2025 corporate manager of HSE operations and training at JESA, a joint venture of OCP and Worley, where she developed a complete audit model from scratch: the framework, the criteria, the checklists and the training of the auditors themselves

Led the certification of the JESA group to ISO 45001, covering more than 4,500 employees and more than 300 active projects. Certified IRCA lead auditor for ISO 45001 with Bureau Veritas, NEBOSH qualified, and a state engineering degree in HSE from the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Rabat, first in her graduating class. Specialist command of HACCP and ISO 22000

JESAIRCA lead auditorISO 45001HACCP and ISO 22000

How we intend to grow

Three phases, each one gated by something real rather than by a calendar. Select a phase to open it

What we are, and what we are not

The distinctions below are written into our terms of use rather than left to interpretation, because in this corridor the difference between them is the difference between a service and a liability

The corridor is spoken, not just shipped

A producer in Tizi Ouzou will not negotiate in English and a Spanish buyer should not have to try. Select a language to see where it does the work

Where we sit

The company is registered in Spain, operates under Spanish law and hires on Spanish employment contracts. Every position we create is created here

Registered office

Barcelona

Catalonia holds 694,046 Muslim residents, more than a quarter of the national total, and 391 of Spain's 2,024 Islamic religious communities. The city is also the largest logistics hub on the Mediterranean coast

Operational presence

Madrid

The densest restaurant and catering market in the country, and the point of contact for national retail groups building out their halal sections

Operational presence

Málaga

Andalusia carries the second largest concentration of demand, and the region sits alongside Algeciras, the principal entry point for Moroccan goods into the European Union

Talk to the founders

Whichever side of the corridor you are on, the message reaches one of the four of us rather than a support queue

  • Buyers in Spain reach the commercial side directly
  • Producers in the Maghreb are answered in Arabic, Darija or French
  • Certification and compliance questions go to our lead auditor
  • Technical and integration questions go to the CTO
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