Kemon
- Founder
- 2025 - present
কেমন
The problem
Ask someone in Dhaka where to eat and they will not open an app. They will ask a cousin. Not because the apps do not exist, but because the reviews in them are worthless: a restaurant that opened last week has forty five-star ratings, and the one-star reviews are from a competitor.
The failure is structural. Every mainstream review platform lets anyone with an email address rate a business they have never visited. Once that is true, the ratings stop carrying information, and everyone quietly falls back to asking a cousin.
The consumer side
Search in Bangla and Banglish, because that is how people actually type. Category discovery, a Near Me feed filtered down the official Division → District → Upazila → Area hierarchy rather than an arbitrary radius, Top Rated and Trending sections, business profiles with photos, menus, hours and price ranges, bookmarks, and a feed personalised from onboarding preferences.
Every account is verified by phone OTP. There are no anonymous profiles on Kemon, which removes the cheapest way to manufacture a reputation.
The business side
Any listing can be added free, by the owner or by a customer, so density does not depend on sales calls. Owners pay a monthly subscription to claim a profile, which unlocks the WhatsApp number, the full address, the exact map pin and the verified badge, along with review management, featured-placement requests, and analytics on views, calls, WhatsApp inquiries and direction requests.
An admin portal handles approvals, proof moderation, duplicate detection, fraud flagging, payments and content.
The decision
You upload the receipt, or you do not review
To leave a review on Kemon you upload a receipt, bill or service document with your visit date. It enters a moderation queue that runs image-hash checks against every proof already in the system, so a bill that has been screenshotted, re-uploaded or passed between accounts is caught before a human ever looks at it. Only after it clears does the review earn a Verified Visit or Verified Service badge.
This makes reviewing meaningfully harder, and that is the point. The platform is not trying to maximise review volume; it is trying to make each review carry information. Reviewers who keep clearing the queue build a credibility score over time from account age and verification rate, with ranks, a leaderboard and rewards, so the cost of proving a visit buys something back.
The third rule is the one businesses argue with: an owner can respond to a review, and can report it as suspicious for moderation, but can never delete it. A review system where the reviewed party holds the delete button is not a review system, it is a brochure.
Stack
React Native app (iOS, Android), Next.js consumer web, Business owner portal, Admin portal
Postgres, Geospatial near-me queries
bKash, Nagad, SSLCOMMERZ
Status
In build. Launching fully free to build density in Dhaka food and restaurants first, then layering claim subscriptions and performance monetisation once the network effect holds.
Next
An Amber Alert system for Bangladesh, built with CID Bangladesh and the Bangladesh Police. Four children have been located through it.