Why WhatsApp is the future of Omani AI e-commerce

Omani businesses are increasingly shifting commerce onto WhatsApp by embedding AI-driven storefronts into the messaging app, a move that founders and investors say streamlines sales and reduces lost revenue. Wiya, an Omani AI startup led by founder and CEO Talal Al Marhoon, has built a platform that automates product inquiry, order placement, payment processing and invoice generation directly within WhatsApp. The company recently secured a strategic investment from Omantel Ventures — a joint fund created by Omantel and Future Fund Oman, which is affiliated with the Oman Investment Authority — underscoring institutional support for AI-enabled conversational commerce.

"Customers naturally expect to inquire about products, place orders, and make payments through WhatsApp, making it unnecessary to require them to download additional applications or navigate more complex online shopping platforms," Al Marhoon said, explaining the company’s user-first rationale.

Why WhatsApp commerce is taking hold

• Fragmented communication across WhatsApp, Instagram and websites often leaves businesses unable to respond quickly, leading to lost sales. Wiya’s platform automates responses, centralises conversations and integrates payments to shorten the path from inquiry to transaction.
• Wiya reports real-world impact: a small village shopkeeper selling bottled water and everyday goods saw sales exceed OMR760 within three days after adopting the AI-enabled WhatsApp system. The shop benefited from immediate customer responses, in-chat purchases, and automatically generated invoices for delivery staff.
• Local language and cultural context are priorities. Al Marhoon emphasised that AI models tailored to Omani and Gulf Arabic dialects perform significantly better than generic systems, although localized vocabulary remains a challenge.

Al Marhoon brings more than 15 years of experience in marketing, e‑commerce and technology to Wiya’s product design, and he frames the platform as a tool for both public and private organisations to improve efficiency, productivity and customer engagement. He also stressed data protection: Wiya implements strict access controls and options that allow institutions to retain customer information within their own systems.

"The future success of artificial intelligence will depend not only on increasingly powerful AI models but equally on maintaining the trust and confidence of businesses and consumers," Al Marhoon said, highlighting trust as a core determinant of adoption.

Context and outlook

Wiya’s funding by Omantel Ventures is being presented as a validation of the startup’s long-term vision for AI-enabled commerce and fits within broader national priorities. Oman has been promoting digital transformation, entrepreneurship and artificial intelligence through initiatives tied to Oman Vision 2040, encouraging domestic technology startups to design solutions tailored to regional business needs rather than relying solely on imported platforms.

As conversational commerce spreads across the Gulf, proponents argue that WhatsApp-based AI storefronts reduce onboarding friction for consumers, lower operational overhead for small and medium enterprises, and allow businesses to scale without large teams or complex infrastructure. Continued progress will hinge on improving dialect-aware AI, maintaining strong data governance, and securing further institutional backing to move chat-based buying from experimental deployments to mainstream retail channels across Oman and the wider Gulf region.