I am Abdullah Emad AlAteeqi. I applied banking logic to fix automotive chaos

There is a tendency to describe automotive innovation as cosmetic, better listings, smoother interfaces, faster lead capture. When the conversation opens with Abdullah Emad AlAteeqi, it becomes clear that his ambition runs deeper. He is not optimising the edges of car buying, he is rebuilding its spine.

As Co-Founder and CEO of Motery, AlAteeqi is constructing an end to end digital automotive ecosystem that treats the purchase, financing and ownership of a car as a single connected journey. The bet is simple but demanding, that convenience and transparency only emerge when the entire system is designed together.

When asked about the experience he brought into the business, AlAteeqi does not start with technology. He starts with behaviour. Years in banking and finance taught him how customers think when decisions become financial, emotional and long term at the same time. The car purchase sits squarely in that territory.

What stood out was not a lack of choice, but fragmentation. Customers were forced to navigate dealers, banks, insurers and service providers as separate worlds. That gap became the design brief. Support the customer from the first interaction through to ownership and beyond, without handing them off between institutions that do not talk to each other.

On the question of how Motery took shape, the origin story is rooted in integration rather than inspiration. The market did not lack apps, it lacked cohesion. Financing lived in one place, inventory in another, insurance somewhere else entirely.

AlAteeqi’s response was not to build a better marketplace, but to collapse the journey into a single digital flow. Test drive booking, car selection, reservation, financing and trade in valuation all had to sit inside one experience. Anything less would simply digitise inconvenience rather than remove it.

Pressed on competitive advantage, AlAteeqi avoids broad claims. The distinction is structural. Motery digitises the full lifecycle, not just the transaction. Customers can move from discovery to financing to after sales services without leaving the app.

Protection packages, tinting and insurance are not add ons, they are part of the core journey. That is what allows the platform to feel complete rather than transactional. The technology stays in the background, while the process feels linear and controlled.

When the conversation turns to competition, AlAteeqi is clear eyed. Kuwait has no shortage of classified platforms and used car marketplaces. Most focus on listings and leads. Motery focuses on execution.

By working directly with authorised dealerships and embedding financing and services into the flow, the company operates closer to infrastructure than media. The difference shows up in who carries complexity. In Motery’s model, the platform absorbs it so the customer does not have to.

Asked to reflect on progress so far, AlAteeqi points to adoption rather than vanity metrics. Thousands of downloads arrived quickly, but more importantly, daily usage followed. Partnerships with leading dealerships converted into real transactions, financing flows and after sales services.

That mix matters. It suggests trust, not just curiosity. In a market where buying a car through an app challenges habit, repeat usage is a stronger signal than growth charts.

On the subject of challenges, the most difficult barrier was cultural. Convincing customers that a car could be purchased and financed entirely through an app required patience and proof. At the same time, integrating banks, insurers and dealerships into a single system tested both technology and operations.

The work was as much about alignment as it was about code. Each partner had to believe in a shared future state, not just a commercial upside.

When asked about expansion, AlAteeqi points to similarity rather than scale. Markets like Saudi Arabia and the UAE share customer expectations and structural inefficiencies. The same fragmentation exists, which means the same opportunity does too.

The intention is not to copy and paste, but to apply a proven model to environments where digital appetite is high and legacy processes still dominate.

Looking ahead, the focus is refinement before reach. Strengthening local market position, expanding after sales services and deepening partnerships come first. Alongside that sits relentless attention to user experience, removing friction step by step.

New features are only valuable if they shorten the journey. That principle continues to guide what gets built and what does not.

When pressed on funding, AlAteeqi frames investor interest around fundamentals. A large, under digitised market. A scalable model. Early traction. A team fluent in finance and consumer behaviour.

Most importantly, Motery does not depend on changing what people want, only on making it easier to get. That is a quieter pitch, but often the stronger one.

On the question of why automotive, the answer comes without hesitation. Large industries that lag in digital transformation hide the most leverage. The complexity is real, but so is the payoff.

For AlAteeqi, the motivation sits at the intersection of technology and usefulness. Rebuilding an old system around modern expectations is harder than launching something new, but far more durable when it works.

Asked to summarise what the app delivers, AlAteeqi describes a closed loop. Car discovery. Test drives. Financing. Reservation. Trade in valuation. Protection, tinting and insurance. All executed digitally, without handoffs or duplicated effort.

The value is not in any single feature, but in removing the need to think about the process at all.