A travel agency sends one code, the whole group must install it: a Umrah app made by a Turkish-German developer that becomes a daily-use Quran app after the trip
What it is An app for Umrah / pilgrimage groups: the travel agency issues a trip code, and on members' phones there's the itinerary, flights and hotels, encrypted group chat and an emergency button. Back home it serves as an ad-free prayer-time and Quran app.
Why it took off The team behind it is @its_mavera, a Turkish-language religious account with 115k followers, so it comes with a built-in audience that trusts it. Add a 38-minute Umrah documentary (2M views over half a month but only 14 comments, very much like paid promotion), and daily Play installs jumped from dozens to hundreds. Agencies sending the code make the whole group install it, and prayer reminders and the Quran keep people around after they return.
BHow you could follow Pick a different Muslim diaspora group nobody is serving (Pakistani-British, North African-French, etc.). Start by following a few local travel agencies' groups for free; members use the app for free, agencies buy credits per group. Shoot a documentary of the trip and promote it on YouTube.
- Data (updated daily) · first launch 2026-07-22 · 11-06 installs 2,961
Android · Total installs worldwide Data 2026-10-29 → 2026-11-06 (9 days, 9 observations). Google's detail page only refreshes install counts every other day, so a flat day doesn't mean nobody installed.
MyRihla is a Umrah / pilgrimage app made by a developer named Kadir Aydın in Hesse, Germany. The travel agency sends each group member a trip code, and on their phone they get the itinerary, flights and hotels, encrypted group chat and an emergency button. After the trip, it works as an ad-free prayer-time and Quran app. On the German App Store it has 114 ratings, all 5 stars. On Google Play it gained 1,225 installs in a week, versus a few a day a month ago. Below: how it gets users, who pays, and whether copying it for a different audience is worth it.
A 38-minute, 2M-view Umrah documentary
On Oct 2026 20, a YouTube channel called "MyRihla - Walk the Seerah" posted a 38-minute Turkish video, "MyRihla ile Umre Yolculuğu" (Umrah trip with MyRihla), 4K, which follows the trip from the opening through Mecca and Medina. Half a month later it has 1,998,266 views, but only 5,703 likes and 14 comments; the whole channel was created in Sep 10, with 6 videos and 1,510 subscribers, and its other videos get between 269 and 12,661 views (YouTube, 11-06).
2M views against 14 comments does not look organic. It looks like this video was put into YouTube ads (inferred, no ad records found externally). The timing matches too: about ten days after the video went up, daily new Google Play installs jumped from dozens to 355 (10-31) and 597 (11-02).
Before that, the developer's own YouTube channel had a video "Oktober Umrah 2026 mit @myrihla-app": a group departing from Frankfurt via Ankara for Umrah, with the title card "geplant mit MyRihla" (planned with MyRihla). From Oct 7 to 13, Play saw roughly 63 installs a day, matching this group's departure.
What it is
The store page's opening line: "Your Umrah, your pilgrimage, and every day after."
On the road: enter the code the agency gave you, and your group, the daily schedule of where to go and when, flights (with boarding passes), and hotels (showing how far from the Haram) all appear. The agency updates the itinerary in real time in the backend, and each item can be marked "going / not going". There is also end-to-end encrypted group chat and an emergency button: when pressed, the agency and the whole group see who is in trouble and where; location is not shared otherwise. There are also Tawaf and Sa'i counters that sync with Apple Watch. The line on the official site for agencies is blunt: "Schluss mit Excel, PDF und Co." (No more Excel, PDFs and the like). It is meant to replace what every group currently uses: a WhatsApp group plus a PDF itinerary.
Back home, it's a daily religious app: prayer times with call-to-prayer audio, a Quran with 10 reciters and word-by-word translation, audio guides to 19 holy sites, the Seerah (prophetic biography), a qibla compass, and home-screen widgets. It supports 24 languages, works offline, and has no ads.
For agencies, the same app handles itinerary planning, entering flights and hotels, handling quote requests, and sending group notices.
What users are saying
German App Store reviews rarely mention travel; they're about everyday use:
"I first downloaded it for prayer times. Then the surprise: every prayer reminder comes with a kind word. It's not just a reminder, it encourages you." (T.hraki, 9-02)
"This app brings together all the useful apps and adds a lot more." (Celikbyb, 8-21)
"What moved me most: in the 'donate' section, the developer doesn't ask for money, they ask you to pray (Duʿā) for them. I've never seen that before." (Adnan Demirci, 9-07)
Reviews are half German, half Turkish, so the user profile is clear: Turkish-origin Muslims in Germany. The Turkish App Store has only 15 ratings, the US store 1 (iTunes, 11-06). On Play it has only appeared at #94–138 on Indonesia's "Travel & Local" free chart, but that chart's bar is extremely low, and neighboring apps had only a few hundred to three thousand cumulative installs, so it says nothing about how many people use it in Indonesia.
Where users come from
| Channel | Evidence | How sure are we? |
|---|---|---|
| The team's own main account @its_mavera | A Turkish-language Islamic lecture / podcast account on Instagram with 115k followers; its joint Reel with @myrihla.app says "MyRihla was developed by our team for the ummah (Muslim community), with no ads, free… 21 languages" | Confirmed |
| The YouTube documentary | The video above with 2M views and 14 comments; ten days later, Play daily installs rose to 355–597 | Likely paid promotion, unverified |
| vlogs filmed with actual groups | The developer channel's "October Umrah", "German group in Mecca", and "SEVR Umrah group 2026"; videos from BALCOK, an established Umrah agency in Essen, are linked alongside these | Confirmed |
| Agencies send the code | Members need the app to see the itinerary, so one group of dozens means dozens of installs | Model confirmed; number of partner agencies unknown |
| Store search | On Play it was renamed "Quran, Umrah & Salah", and in Germany "Koran, Umrah & Gebet"; localized into 24 languages | Effect not verified |
The most important part is the first line. It is not a cold start: behind it is an existing Turkish-language religious audience that trusts it. No one on X mentioned it in 90 days, and it has never been covered by media.
Where the money comes from
The user side is free with no ads. The money comes from the agencies: the German App Store in-app purchases read "Credit One 17,99 €", "Credits 5 89,99 €", "Credits 10 179,00 €", and on Play the in-app range is listed up to $799.99. Given the official site says trip codes are issued by agencies in the backend, the most likely arrangement is that agencies buy credits per group (or per code), with one credit at about 18 euros (inferred from the in-app product names). How many were sold is not visible externally.
This pricing has almost no barrier for agencies: a Umrah group departing from Germany typically costs over a thousand euros per person (estimate), so spending 18 euros more per group to replace the WhatsApp group and PDF is a small decision.
Who's nearby
| Competitors | Scale | How it differs from MyRihla |
|---|---|---|
| Nusuk (Saudi Hajj Ministry, official) | Play 26.6M installs | The official entry for visas, bookings and permits. There is no travel-agency-runs-the-group layer. MyRihla fills a gap; it doesn't replace it. |
| Ziyara.io | Not verified | Travel agencies' admin back-office (clients, room allocation, rosters, finance). The pilgrim app is an add-on. |
| Erahajj / ProHajj (Indonesia) | Claims 700+ travel agencies | An Indonesian travel-agency system, billed monthly per head. Doesn't serve Europe. |
| MyIbadah (Indonesia) | Play 102k installs | A personal app for extra umrah and prayer. No agency issues codes. |
| Muslim Pro, Athan, etc. | 100M+ | The bulk of daily prayer use. Ad- or subscription-supported. No group management. |
| UmraGo (Turkey) | Play 297 installs | Appeared alongside July, very small |
The agency back-office plus pilgrim app route is proven: Indonesia's Erahajj and the SaaS player Ziyara both work. But their weight is on the back-office, and the traveler side is secondary. Building a traveler app that is good-looking, multilingual, and still opened daily after returning home as a religious app: so far only MyRihla is doing it. I see no one copying it.
If it were you
B: Worth a try. The model is clear and almost nobody knows about it, but its recent surge comes from things you don't have. The combination of "agency-issued codes that make the whole group install it + daily religious content after returning home + agencies paying" can be copied, and several large diaspora groups in Europe are still unserved. But its distribution rests on a 115k-follower in-house religious account plus a long documentary that is likely paid promotion. Copy only the app and you lack a community that trusts you, so cold start will be much harder. Nobody knows how many credits it has sold.
Who it suits: Developers who are already inside a Muslim diaspora community, know local Hajj agencies, or control a religious content account. The most direct fits are British Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities, North African communities in France and Belgium, and Moroccan communities in the Netherlands (inferred; I did not verify whether similar products already exist locally).
Who it doesn't suit: People who don't understand this circle. Religious apps run on trust, and users care who built them. Travel agencies are won one by one through direct negotiation, not bought with ads. Don't try this if you only want to ship a prayer app through store search. That space belongs to long-established players like Muslim Pro, with hundreds of millions of installs.
How to build it: Start with one language and one country. The traveler side does four things only: a travel code that unlocks the itinerary, flights and hotels, group chat, and an emergency button. The daily side offers prayer times, the Quran, and audio commentary in the local language. The user app is free with no ads. Agencies buy credits per group, priced at a fraction of one trip's cost (it is roughly €18). First, get three to five local agencies to run one or two groups for free, and make the pitch "goodbye to WhatsApp groups and PDFs."
How to acquire users: Go on a trip with a group you work with and make a long documentary. This is the move most worth copying. Post the film on YouTube and push it to local-language Muslim audiences. Partner with local religious lecture channels and mosque communities so that someone credible vouches for who built it first. Once travelers install the app, daily prayer reminders are your retention.
Timing: Umrah runs all year, but agencies book groups and travelers install in peaks before Ramadan and the Hajj season. Ramadan in 2027 falls around February, so if you want to catch it, you need a version that can handle group travel before year-end (dates follow the Islamic calendar and depend on the year). MyRihla already supports 24 languages. Its push into the UK and France is only a matter of spending on ads, and this window won't stay open.
Where you could be wrong: ① You talk to ten agencies and fewer than two are willing to pay per group. That means the agencies' pain isn't that sharp, and a WhatsApp group is good enough. ② One month after travelers return home, open rates drop to single digits. "Stays on the phone after returning" doesn't hold, and it's just a one-off travel tool. ③ Two or three months from now, MyRihla's ratings outside the German store are still in single digits and daily Play installs fall back to dozens. That would mean the current surge was a one-time push from one video and its in-house account, and the model itself is still unproven.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one Nusuk (Saudi Hajj Ministry) Android 2023-12 Play 26.6M installs Official visa and booking entry. No agency group management or group chat features. Ziyara.io Web About 2025 Not verified Mainly a travel-agency ERP, with the pilgrim app as an add-on. MyRihla focuses on the traveler experience and daily religious content after returning home. Erahajj / ProHajj Web 2017 Claims 700+ travel agencies An Indonesian travel-agency management system billed monthly per traveler. Does not serve European diaspora markets. MyIbadah Android 2021 102k installs A personal companion app for extra umrah and prayer. No agency code issuance or group organization. Al-Mutawwif and other ritual guides Android 2012 1.47M installs Pure ritual guides with no group features. Muslim Pro and other all-in-one Muslim apps iOS 2010 100M+ The bulk of daily prayer use. Ad- or subscription-supported, with no agency group features. WhatsApp groups + PDF/Excel itineraries Other The current default MyRihla is designed to replace this setup, folding itinerary, group chat and SOS into one app. - Where users come from
- Confirmed In-house content account @its_mavera (Instagram 115k followers): a Reel co-posted with @myrihla.app says "MyRihla'yı ekibimiz ümmet için geliştirdi" (our team built MyRihla for the ummah). The YouTube channel also posts Mavera-style courses.
- Inferred YouTube long-form paid promotion: 10/20 posted a 38-minute Turkish video, "MyRihla ile Umre Yolculuğu", that got 2M views but only 5,703 likes and 14 comments, and the channel has 1,510 subscribers. Daily Play installs climbed to 355–597 about 10 days later.
- Confirmed Vlogs from travel with real groups: the developer's channel has videos like "Oktober Umrah 2026 mit @myrihla-app", a German group, and the SEVR Hajj group. The small daily install peaks of 10/7–13 (63 per day) line up with October departures.
- Confirmed Agency-issued codes (B2B2C): the website says travel codes are issued by agencies to unlock itineraries and group chats. The App Store sells credits for €17.99–179.
- Inferred Store search / ASO: titles use keywords like Quran, Umrah and Salah, and the app is localized into 24 languages. Effect not verified.
Why MyRihla: Quran, Umrah & Salah (app.myrihla.mobile) showed up
Research date 2026-11-06. Sources: our googleplay and appstore databases ("the database" below), store pages, the official website, the YouTube Data API, and Jina search.
One line
A personal project by Kadir Aydin, an indie developer in Kelsterbach, Hesse, Germany. It is a "extra umrah / Hajj group companion + daily religious" app. An agency issues a travel code, and group members get their itinerary, flights, hotels, an encrypted group chat and an emergency button on their phones. After the trip, it works as an ad-free Quran and prayer-times app. Its users are mainly Turkish-German Muslims in Germany. The recent rise in installs comes from two things: the team's own Turkish-language religious content account @its_mavera (115k Instagram followers) pushing traffic to it, and a 38-minute Turkish-language long-form video, "MyRihla Umrah documentary", which looks like paid YouTube promotion (posted 10/20, about 2M views in half a month, with only 1,510 channel subscribers).
1. Data
- Google Play: the database shows 2026-11-06 cumulative installs as of 2,961,7 days +1,225. Backfilled history from AppstoreSpy (estimated): 8 through September, 2–13 installs per day; 10/7–10/13 about 63 per day; 10/30–11/2 jumped to 355 and 597 (database app_day). Play rating: 0. It has only charted in Indonesia's free Travel & Local category, at #94–138 (database chart_rank 10/29–11/06). That category has a low bar: the #96 spot has only 3,048 cumulative installs, and #98 has 580, so charting in Indonesia says little about its actual Indonesian user base. The data card's recall reason says it is "listed only in Indonesia"; that is a misreading. n_countries_now counts the countries where it charts, not where it is listed.
- App Store (id6777581933,2026-07-03, category Education): the German store has 114 ratings averaging 5.0; the Turkish store has 15, the US store 1, and other stores are basically 0 (iTunes lookup, 11-06). It has shipped more than 25 versions in three months, roughly one version a week from 7 to October 1–2 (App Store version history). In other words, its home base is iOS in the German store, and the Play installs are only part of the picture.
- Pricing: the German App Store in-app purchases include "Credit One 17,99 €", "Credits 5 89,99 €" and "Credits 10 179,00 €". Play in-app purchases range from $14.99–$799.99 (database). The website says the app is free for users with no ads, and agencies issue travel codes in the "operator console". From this I infer that agencies buy credits per group (or per code). This is only inferred from the in-app purchase names and is unverified.
2. Competitors
| Product | Where | When | Scale | How it differs from MyRihla |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nusuk (Saudi Hajj Ministry, official) | iOS/Android | 2023-12 | Play 26.6M installs, 7 days +480k (database) | The official entry for visas, bookings and permits. No agency-to-traveler organizational layer. MyRihla fills a gap; it doesn't replace it. |
| Ziyara.io | Web SaaS + pilgrim app | Around 2025 | Unverified, 30-day free trial | Essentially an agency ERP (CRM, room allocation, rosters, finance), with the pilgrim app as an add-on (e-badges, SOS). MyRihla is the reverse: it leads with the traveler experience, supports multiple languages, and still works as a religious app after the trip. |
| Erahajj / ProHajj (Indonesia) | Web SaaS + app | From ¥2017 | Claims to serve 700+ travel agencies | An Indonesian travel-agency management system billed monthly per traveler. Does not serve European diaspora markets. |
| UmrahCore, TravelBoost, Turkey's fibercozum and other agency software | Web/Android | — | Small | Agency back-office software with a weak traveler side |
| MyIbadah (Indonesia) | Android | 2021 | 102k installs (database) | A personal companion app for extra umrah plus prayer. No agency code issuance or group organization. |
| المطوف / Bekal Haji / Diyanet Hac-Umre Rehberi / Hajj Umrah Guide (Offline) | Android/iOS | 2012–2026 | 1.47M / 290k / — / 4,606 (database) | Just a ritual guide with no group features |
| Muslim Pro, Athan and other all-in-one Muslim apps | iOS/Android | Around 2010 | 100M+ | The bulk of daily prayer use. Ad- or subscription-supported, with no agency group features. |
| UmraGo (Furtech, Turkey) | Android | 2026-07-20 | 297 installs (library) | A small Turkish Hajj app that launched around the same time, with a tiny footprint. |
| WhatsApp groups + PDF/Excel itineraries | — | — | The current default | MyRihla's website says it outright: "Schluss mit Excel, PDF und Co." (No more Excel, PDFs and the like). That's exactly the mess it's meant to replace. |
Verdict: the "travel agency back office + pilgrim app" route has already been proven (Ziyara, Erahajj), but those are agency management tools, with the traveler side as an afterthought. We haven't seen anyone else build the traveler side into a polished, multilingual religious app that people keep using after they return home.
3. Where the users come from (evidence)
- The team's own main account @its_mavera (confirmed): 115K followers on Instagram, making Turkish-language Islamic knowledge content, lectures and podcasts (from Jina search summary). It co-posted a Reel with @myrihla.app, with this caption in the original: "MyRihla'yı ekibimiz ümmet için geliştirdi. Reklamsız ve ücretsizdir… 21 dilde" (Our team developed MyRihla for the ummah. It's ad-free and free… in 21 languages). Instagram user @kdrdn61 has a bio reading "@its_mavera @myrihla.app". MyRihla's YouTube channel also posts Mavera-style "Sebeb-i Nüzûl Dersleri" (Asbab al-Nuzul lessons). So this is not a cold start: it comes with a ready-made Turkish-speaking religious audience.
- YouTube long-form, likely paid promotion (highly probable, not directly verified): the @myrihla-app channel was created 9/10, has only 6 videos and 1,510 subscribers, and 2.01M total views. Its 10/20 upload "MyRihla ile Umre Yolculuğu" (38 min, 4K) alone has 1,998,266 views, but only 5,703 likes and 14 comments. The other videos have just 269–12,661 views (YouTube Data API, 11-06). The ratio of views to subscribers and comments looks nothing like organic traffic and fits a paid push on this video (in-stream or discovery). Play daily installs rose from 50 to 355–597 (10/30–11/2) about 10 days after the video went up, which lines up with it. Our googleads library doesn't track this advertiser, so we can't pull the ad records, and a metaads search for "rihla" returned nothing.
- Real pilgrimage vlogs (confirmed): the developer's own YouTube channel, "Kadir Aydın", has videos like "Oktober Umrah 2026 mit @myrihla-app" (departing Frankfurt via Ankara, opening with "geplant mit MyRihla", i.e. planned with MyRihla), "Deutsch sprachige Gruppe Mekka" (a German-speaking group in Mecca), and "SEVR Kafilesi Hac 2026" (SEVR Hajj group 2026). In search results, BALCOK (a long-established Hajj operator in Essen, Germany, with 13.7k Instagram followers) also shows up alongside these videos for its Hajj compilations. The daily install peaks of 10/7–10/13 (63 per day) line up with the October group's departure.
- Agency codes (model confirmed, number of partner agencies not verified): travelers must install the app to see their itinerary, so a group of dozens means dozens of forced installs. This is the built-in entry point of B2B2C.
- Store search / ASO: on Play the app is named "Quran, Umrah & Salah" ("Koran, Umrah & Gebet" in the German store), localized into 24 languages, targeting long-tail searches for words like "Quran" and "Umrah". The only evidence is the title strategy; its effect is unverified.
- Organic word of mouth: on TikTok, @themuslimlistener0 mentioned in a list of Hajj apps, "MyRihla for prayer times, Qibla and du'as." X returns no mentions (x-radar, 90 posts in 0 days).
4. Why it took off
- Built-in audience: the team is the Turkish-language religious account Mavera, with 115k followers, so trust and reach don't start from zero. On the German iOS store it has 114 ratings averaging 5 stars, mostly from Germany's Turkish-origin community.
- Paid promotion with content as creative: a 38-minute documentary shot on a real pilgrimage got 2M views and looks paid. Films like this hit religious audiences emotionally far harder than feature demos.
- Forced install at the entry point: agencies send trip codes to travelers, who must install the app, so acquisition cost is nearly zero. The agency pays (credits at €17.99–179).
- Reasons to stay after returning home: Quran recitation by 10 reciters, prayer reminders, Tawaf counting on Apple Watch, and 55 Seerah (Prophet's biography) audio turn a "one-off travel app" into a religious app people open daily, which can carry Mavera's content.
- Fast iteration: releases every week, 24 languages, end-to-end encryption, and noticeably more polish than typical agency software.
5. Differentiation
Its edge is combining two sides: agency group management (codes, itineraries, emergency button, quote inquiry inbox) and a design-led daily religious app for travelers, in 24 languages, starting with the European diaspora. Peers are either agency ERPs (Ziyara, Erahajj) or personal guide and prayer apps (Muslim Pro, المطوف, MyIbadah). That differentiation is why agencies and travelers have a reason to choose it. But the recent install surge comes mostly from Mavera's audience and the YouTube documentary: the product determines whether it keeps people and wins agency money, while distribution comes from that main account.
6. Visibility and copycats
- Revenue isn't public, no press coverage, 0 mentions on X, 0 rating on Play. Almost nobody outside the niche knows about it; it spreads only within Muslim communities in Germany and Turkey.
- Copycats: none clearly imitating it yet. UmraGo (Turkey, launched in July, 297 installs) was built independently around the same time.
7. Takeaways
- "B2B forced-install via code + C-side retention after returning home": works for any group-travel scenario, e.g. study tours, pilgrimages, marathon tours, religious trips.
- Using long documentary footage of real user journeys as ad creative works far better than feature demo videos.
- Using a content account to drive installs to your tool app, then feeding content (podcasts, courses) back into the app to lift retention.
- Monetization: groups buy credits from the operator, end users pay nothing and see no ads, which makes word of mouth easy.
8. Still unclear
- Whether the 2M views were paid, how much was spent, and in which countries: googleads doesn't track it, so this can't be confirmed directly.
- How many agencies partner with it and how many credits actually get sold; also unknown what the $799.99 tier on Play actually is.
- Indonesia chart: how much of the installs come from Indonesia is unclear; it may just be an artifact of the low bar on the category chart.
- The exact relationship between Kadir Aydın, the Mavera team and BALCOK (shareholders, partners or clients) is unverified.
Sources
- Play page play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.myrihla.mobile; libraries googleplay app_snap / app_day / app_day_ext / chart_rank (10/29–11/06)
- App Store Germany apps.apple.com/de/app/id6777581933 (114 ratings, in-app credits, version history); iTunes lookup across storefronts
- Website www.myrihla.app/de/, /gefuehrte-reise.html, /impressum.html
- YouTube channel @myrihla-app (UChkamw8zSRKp3jcan5EJL0A), video FYo6jWClMT0; Kadir Aydın channel video sOWa3NmNwHY
- Instagram Reel www.instagram.com/reel/DdyVgENMSRQ/ (its_mavera × myrihla.app); @its_mavera follower count taken from search snippets
- Competitors: ziyara.io, erahajj.co.id, prohajj.co.id, innovatesolution.com/umrahcore-agent-app, travelboost.app; library googleplay search umrah/hajj