Nafas Charts Growth in Qatar with a Vision for Cleaner Air Nathan Roestandy, co-founder and CEO of Nafas, on scaling the company's air-quality technology with Qatar as a key market for regional growth.

Nathan Roestandy, co-founder and CEO of Singapore-headquartered Nafas, proudly shares that his air-quality health technology company has already generated significant revenue across multiple markets and is now poised to scale further. The company's immediate focus is on establishing a strong presence in Qatar and the wider GCC, backed by its first institutional funding round led by Singapore-based Rigel Capital and Qatar Development Bank.

Nafas's entry into Qatar began with early conversations with the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI), which eventually led to its first investment in the country through Doha Tech Angels, an angel investment syndicate based in Doha.

Following several visits and engagements with various organizations, we were introduced to MCIT's various accelerator programs, which helped secure additional funding, mentoring opportunities, and networking. It then became clear that Qatar—and the wider GCC—offered a strong strategic fit for the company's growth.

"In 2022, as we began approaching research labs that specialized in air quality, we got connected with QEERI (Qatar Energy & Environment Research Institute) which paved the way for our eventual expansion into Qatar and GCC," Roestandy says. "However, it wasn't until we received investment from Qatar Development Bank (through the Startup Qatar program) that we finally decided to officially setup an office in Qatar, which included myself relocating to Doha. This was in early 2025, since then it's been an amazing experience and a big inflection point in my personal development and aspirations of being an entrepreneur."

The origins of Nafas trace back to Roestandy's early career in his family's manufacturing business, which produced apparel for regional and global fashion brands. Frequent business trips to China exposed him to the country's rapid industrialization and the new industries it was fueling. Among the developments that stood out most to him was the growing challenge of air pollution—an issue that would later inspire the creation of Nafas. "In China, sustaining rapid growth came at the expense of immense environmental damage as well as increasing backlash from the public, specifically around issues that carried significant health consequences," Roestandy explains. "As awareness for air pollution reached a tipping point, consumer behavior en masse began to shift and drive demand for emerging trends in the health and wellness category, one of which was air pollution. Seeing all of this happen in China, I began to ask myself if this is a trend that could also unfold in other emerging countries?"

Roestandy then began developing a business plan focused on creating a vertically integrated software and hardware company. At its core was a central value proposition: addressing how millions of urban residents in highly polluted cities could be supported in their pursuit of healthier air. "A few months later I recall meeting Piotr, an old high school friend who started his career in advertising and ended up as Chief Marketing Officer at a giant tech company," he says. "He expressed to me his desire to start a business in the environmental space and also spoke about air pollution and how he was personally affected by it. After several conversations, we decided to team up and build Nafas. My background in manufacturing and product design coupled with his marketing and communications skillset proved to be an effective combo as we proceeded towards recruiting a founding team which included our third co-founder Eason Chow, an ex-Dyson designer and engineer."

The journey to build Nafas officially began in early 2020, with the Nafas mobile app in Indonesia quickly becoming the #1 environmental app in the country, reaching hundreds of thousands of downloads and helping Nafas win the prestigious Google award for Social Impact Startup of the Year. Roestandy adds, "The second act of the business was the launch of the Clean Air Zone subscription service, an indoor air quality monitoring and purification solution that combined hardware, software and operations into a fixed monthly fee. The goal of Clean Air Zones is simple, to democratize access to healthy air and create a new standard for indoor air quality management in emerging countries. Accomplishing this goal would entail building strong competencies across a wide range of domains, from cutting edge hardware for air purification and monitoring, cloud and IoT platforms to big data and AI."

Today, Nafas counts multinational companies, international schools and universities, as well as government organizations as its customers. The Clean Air Zone service is also serving hundreds of residential customers across Qatar, UAE, and Indonesia. "Nafas is currently operational in the UAE and is in the process of setting up an entity in Dubai," Roestandy says. "Expanding to the wider GCC market was always part of Nafas's Middle East expansion plans, however, we wanted to first situate ourselves in Qatar and build a team that would support expansion into other GCC countries."

He adds, "While Qatar's domestic B2C market may be small, its B2B and B2G markets are sizable, therefore it is important to correctly estimate the market opportunities relevant to the startup and approach expansion in a very tactical and efficient way while making sure that it is investing in the right avenues and forming partnerships to help with operations and distribution."

Offering his perspective to fellow entrepreneurs, Roestandy reflected that the most significant hurdle Nafas encountered in Qatar was navigating the complexities of deal-making. "As a foreign company entering Qatar it's easy to become enthralled by the myriad of opportunities available, given that there are so many of them. However, developing a good understanding of the cultural nuances of doing business in Qatar and more importantly learning the mechanics of how to close deals is something that is less obvious and often overlooked," he says. "In fact, it is perhaps the most important challenge to overcome in order to become successful, especially if the business involves selling to government institutions and enterprise customers. For me personally, overcoming that challenge required a lot of guidance and support which fortunately already existed in the startup ecosystem. However, without extreme proactiveness and curiosity in reaching out to key individuals and organizations as well as building strong relationships, Nafas would have had a much more difficult time in building traction in Qatar."

Nafas currently has four commercial partnerships with various companies spanning Qatar, the UAE, and KSA, which enable it to expand in a cost effective manner while still maintaining a strong presence in each market. "Building strong commercial partnerships that leverage each company's distribution and operational capabilities is a critical part of Nafas's expansion strategy," Roestandy says.

Roestandy concluded by noting that in many emerging countries, air pollution and other environmental challenges are often seen as unavoidable byproducts of growth and industrialization, making such markets well-suited for Nafas's solutions. Qatar, however, stands out as particularly attractive, with a unique combination of factors that strengthen its potential as a key market for the company's expansion. "The first is a pro innovation government that is playing a crucial role in shaping the development trajectory of the country, particularly around sustainability and health, two core pillars of Nafas's value proposition," he says. "The second, which closely relates to the first, is favorable regulatory conditions to help foreign companies such as Nafas enter the market. Lastly, a growing startup and capital markets environment that's conducive towards early-stage company growth. Adding to that is the unique geography of the country which makes air pollution somewhat of an endemic problem."