Picture this.
You are training for your first half marathon in Doha. Every day you show up to the track, and every day you face the same problem: the sportswear available to you was not designed for you.
The options were bleak. “Triple X large male t-shirts — that’s the alternative that women have,” as I would later describe it. Or you layered up: grab whatever technical fabric you need underneath, then pile non-technical clothing on top to get the coverage you need.
It did not perform. It did not look good. And it sent a quiet but clear message: serious sport is not really for you.
That frustration became the founding problem of oola.
A Complaint in the Gym That Became a Company
In 2015 I returned to Doha after studying abroad, and I was often one of the very few Qatari women on the running track. I was training for my first half marathon alongside my friend and now co-founder Amina Ahmadi, who was preparing for a trek up Mount Kilimanjaro.
Every day at training, we complained about the same thing. The sportswear available to us was designed for one kind of woman — and we were not her. The options were bleak. “Triple X large male t-shirts,” as I would later describe it to Wamda. “That’s the alternative that women have.” Or you layered up, grabbing whatever technical fabric you needed underneath and piling non-technical clothing on top to achieve coverage.
It did not look good. It did not perform well. And it sent a quiet but clear message: sport is not really for you.
One day, mid-complaint, I told Amina I was serious about doing something about it. I was not yet sure what.
From Idea to Research to Launch
From June 2015, it took almost a year of desk research and legwork to identify the right product and the right market. I approached large sportswear companies with a simple proposition: make a few small tweaks to your existing styles and you open an entirely new market. The response I got from every single one was no.
“That’s what I wanted to hear,” I told myself.
We built a team of five women and one man. We joined the Qatar Business Incubation Center (QBIC) — which provided the structure, mentorship, and resources a first-time founder in Qatar needs. We developed the product. We tested it. And in October 2016 we launched with an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, raising $33,790 from 115 backers in under 30 days.
The response told us everything we needed to know about the demand that had been sitting, unmet, for years.
By January 2017 we had delivered every crowdfunded order. By February we were in three Sports Corner stores in Doha. Over the first two months of retail sales, our average monthly growth was 160 percent.
oola. officially launched its full collection on October 9, 2016 — and Qatar’s first modest sportswear brand was real.
What oola. Means
The name is not accidental.
oola. comes from the Arabicأولى — meaning “the first.” We chose it deliberately. We were the first dedicated modest performance sportswear brand founded in Qatar, and among the first anywhere in the world to approach modest athleticwear as a genuine performance engineering problem rather than a fashion afterthought.
We are not a hijab brand that added some leggings. We are not a mainstream activewear brand that released a “modest collection” for Ramadan. oola. was built from the ground up for women who are serious about sport and serious about coverage — and who should never have to choose between the two. We want every woman to put her wellbeing first. When we do, we can give everything else our best.
Building the Full Kit
From the beginning, we set out to build a complete wardrobe for active modest women — not just a few token pieces.
We made running clothes. We made hiking gear. We made head covers. We designed a running abaya — a performance-engineered version of a traditional garment that women in the Gulf could actually run in. We developed a triathlon suit in partnership with Texas A&M University Qatar athlete Doaa Awad, who had been struggling with the clothing transition between swimming and cycling stages in triathlons, previously wearing a wetsuit underlayer and a dress on top in competition. Our oola. tri-suit gave her a single, performance-engineered solution.
Each of these products came from real women with real problems, and we solved them with real engineering.
Recognition and Growth
In 2017 the Qatar Olympic Committee recognised oola. with its Innovation Award — acknowledging the brand’s contribution to advancing women’s sport and innovation in Qatar.
That same year, Qatar Today named me Entrepreneur of the Year — a recognition that meant a great deal, both personally and as a signal that what we were building was being taken seriously in the Qatari business community.
We were featured in Wamda, Entrepreneur Middle East, and ILoveQatar.net. We were incubated at QBIC and supported in our early years of growth by Qatar Development Bank.
In 2025, Qatar Foundation featured my story in their QF Generation series — a collection of stories about people who found their voice and direction through QF and went on to build something meaningful. Qatar Foundation described oola. as “Qatar’s first modest activewear brand, helping women move freely and confidently.”
What oola. Looks Like Today
A decade after that half marathon — the one with the layers that barely fit — oola. has grown into a full-range modest sportswear brand.
We now offer women’s performance and leisure lines, men’s and kids’ ranges, a dedicated head covers collection featuring four performance-engineered styles, and a community platform — O Lab — built around the belief that movement and modesty belong together.
Every piece in the collection is engineered for real athletic performance: breathable, moisture-wicking fabrics; four-way stretch construction; full-coverage silhouettes that move with the body rather than against it. Our garments are designed specifically for the Gulf climate — built for heat, humidity, and the active outdoor lifestyle that women across Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, and the wider MENA region live.
We ship to over 65 countries. But we are still a Qatar brand, made for the woman who runs the Corniche at 6am, trains at the gym after work, hikes in the cooler months, and wants to look and feel like herself while doing all of it.
Why This Still Matters
The global modest sportswear market has changed significantly since 2015. Nike released the Pro Hijab in 2017. Major brands have launched dedicated modest collections. Awareness is higher than it has ever been.
But the founding problem — genuinely engineered modest sportswear that performs at the level active women deserve, designed by people who actually live this life — is still not fully solved by global brands.
oola. was built by women who needed it. It is still run by women who need it. And it is made for every woman across the GCC and beyond who has ever stared down a pile of ill-fitting layers and thought: there has to be a better way.
There is. It is called oola.
