Dhanish Athif 🇲🇻🇲🇾

Co-Founder at MyBump Media.
Entrepreneur, Lean Startup Coach, Tech Enthusiast, Husband, Father

[SparkHub @sparkhubmv]

Full highlights from the first-ever @leanstartuplabx — Malaysia Edition 🚀

An amazing weekend of innovation, collaboration, customer discovery, validation, and pitching in partnership with Asia Pacific University & MSA-APU.

Big thanks to everyone who made it happen 🔥

[Dhanish Athif 🇲🇻🇲🇾 @catchdhanish]

Today I met a startup founder that didn't know that MacBooks once had glowing  @Apple logos on the back.

[Dhanish Athif 🇲🇻🇲🇾 @catchdhanish]

“Eyge dhuvas aiima, digu app vess faalhu vaane” - @kudanai, 2026

[SparkHub @sparkhubmv]

Assumptions → Evidence. In just 48 hours. ⚡
The @leanstartuplabx Malaysia is officially open for registration!

📅 23–24 May 2026
📍Kuala Lumpur

🎟️ https://t.co/iEyaWPfh4C

Open to ALL students studying in Malaysia.

In partnership with Maldives Students Association of APU

[Dhanish Athif 🇲🇻🇲🇾 @catchdhanish]

Two days. A room full of peers. An idea you've been sitting on.
Open to all Malaysian uni students. No startup experience required.
Register → https://t.co/tP8hLAkET2
Know a uni student? Repost or send their way. 🇲🇾

[Dhanish Athif 🇲🇻🇲🇾 @catchdhanish]

You don't need months to know if your startup idea is worth building.
You need 48 hours.
That's the whole premise of Lean Startup Lab — coming to KL this May. 🧵

[SparkHub @sparkhubmv]

Assumptions → Evidence. In just 48 hours. ⚡
The @leanstartuplabx Malaysia is officially open for registration!

📅 23–24 May 2026
📍Kuala Lumpur

🎟️ https://t.co/iEyaWPfh4C

Open to ALL students studying in Malaysia.

In partnership with Maldives Students Association of APU

[Dhanish Athif 🇲🇻🇲🇾 @catchdhanish]

Not in theory.
Real customers. Real feedback. Real signal.
Form a hypothesis. Design a cheap experiment. Update your worldview based on actual evidence.
A mindset that compounds — in research, in any job, in every ambitious project you'll take on.

[Dhanish Athif 🇲🇻🇲🇾 @catchdhanish]

Excited to be a part of this 🤩

[SparkHub @sparkhubmv]

Assumptions → Evidence. In just 48 hours. ⚡
The @leanstartuplabx Malaysia is officially open for registration!

📅 23–24 May 2026
📍Kuala Lumpur

🎟️ https://t.co/iEyaWPfh4C

Open to ALL students studying in Malaysia.

In partnership with Maldives Students Association of APU

[Dhanish Athif 🇲🇻🇲🇾 @catchdhanish]

☕️?

[Kumail Nanji @kumailnanji]

built a fun apple-esque "hello" text animation

works with any text

[Dhanish Athif 🇲🇻🇲🇾 @catchdhanish]

@nuhafuri That’s like saying every book ever written should be free. They took words (that are freely accessible to anyone) and simply arranged them into sentences. It’s not like the author invented the words.

[Mohamed Yaniu @mohamed_yaniu]

A lot of people are talking about the “Malé Taxi” name right now. I want to share our side of the story not as a complaint, but because 10 years of hard work deserves to be heard.

In 2015, we registered the business name “Malé Taxi” under Taviyani Pvt Ltd (Registration No. BN-0929/2015). That same year, we launched Kobaa Taxi, an online taxi booking service. We purchased 150 Samsung tablets from Thailand, along with MiFi devices and SIM cards from Dhiraagu, all with our own money, and distributed them to drivers ourselves. There was no funding, no backing just our own effort to build something new for Malé.

In 2016, we submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Economic Development for motorcycle taxi services (RFP Ref: (IUL)101-AF/2016/77). We demonstrated the concept, but our proposal was not selected. We were then advised to apply through a new regulation, and we followed every process as required.

In 2017, the ministry opened an Expression of Interest for Premium Taxi Services in Malé and Hulhumalé (Ref: (IUL)101-AF/1/2017/31, dated 1 February 2017). We submitted a detailed proposal featuring electric and hybrid vehicles, app-based booking, Maldivian drivers in uniform, cashless rides, and a phased rollout plan. We even beat MTCC on price. In the end, the project was cancelled.

At that time, very few people in the Maldives believed an app-based taxi service could work so in 2017, we stopped.
But we did not give up.

In February 2019, we rebranded and launched Avas Ride. We started again from zero with no outside rescue. Just our own money, our own belief, and our determination to keep going.

Today 7 years later Avas Ride has more than 160,000 customers and 3,000+ drivers. In 2025 alone, we completed 2.9 million rides.

As a white-label platform, we faced limitations in customizing the product for the Maldivian market including constraints around integrations such as BML payment gateway ,implementation of safety features. Despite these challenges, we continued to grow and validate the model locally.

In 2023, we made a major decision: to build our own platform from scratch.
We began developing Avas App with a fully Maldivian team 8 developers, a CTO, a UI designer, and a product manager. We successfully launched it with a grand event, marking a new chapter for locally built technology.

Today, we are preparing for an international white-label launch in Q3 this year.

We proved that this model works not with government money, but with persistence, resilience, and belief in what we are building.

Then, on 2 April 2026, MTCC launched “Malé Taxi Line”: electric vehicles, app-based booking, Malé and Hulhumalé coverage, and uniformed drivers. It is almost identical to what we proposed in 2017 and it uses the name we registered in 2015.

We sent a formal notice regarding name infringement to MTCC on 28 March 2026. They launched anyway. There was no response, no negotiation, and no acknowledgment.
Let us be clear we are not against better public transport. In fact, we have spent the last decade trying to build exactly that.

But if a legally registered business name can be used by a state-owned company without even a conversation, then what message does that send entrepreneurs in Maldives.

[sam henri gold @samhenrigold]

https://t.co/DOxbGZpnT9

[Dhanish Athif 🇲🇻🇲🇾 @catchdhanish]

How I plan my work sprints nowadays.

[Dhanish Athif 🇲🇻🇲🇾 @catchdhanish]

@djngoma Niiice

[Hermet Park @HermetPark]

ThorVG v1.0 has finally been released!
https://t.co/aJBDdxl26f

[SparkHub @sparkhubmv]

Maldives’ first Generative AI Hackathon is here

GenAI Hack .26 brought in partnership with @Dhiraagu

👉No shipping, no pitching.
⏱️48 hours to build, deploy & launch a live AI product
🗓️6–8 Feb 2026
🔗 Register Now - https://t.co/6A6i08ZDxM

#GenAIHack26

[SparkHub @sparkhubmv]

🎥 What an amazing evening here at #HuddleMalaysia 🇲🇾

Different journeys. Shared ambition.

Founders, builders, and curious minds came together for an evening of stories, learning, and real connections — beyond borders.

This is just the beginning. 🚀