A Chat with Zamiha Desai MBE, Founder at RecommendAsian and ProfessionalAsian

“We’ve proved that authentic community-building generates better business results than paid advertising.”

Tell us about RecommendAsian and ProfessionalAsian

RecommendAsian and ProfessionalAsian are community platforms that have transformed how businesses connect with the British Asian market. RecommendAsian focuses on consumer recommendations with over 75,000 women who are often the primary household decision-makers, while ProfessionalAsian is our B2B and B2C community with 96,000 people, including business professionals and service providers.

What we’ve created is something many B2B companies struggle to build: highly engaged, trust-driven communities with impressive organic reach. RecommendAsian posts can reach up to 48,000 people organically, while ProfessionalAsian reaches up to 52,000 – numbers many businesses can’t achieve even with significant ad spend. We’re often called “the Asian Google” because both consumers and businesses turn to us first for trusted recommendations and professional connections.

Our business model is quite different. We built the audience first, then developed revenue streams around what the community actually needed. This includes structured business promotion opportunities, networking events, and our flagship exhibition Hey Gorgeous, which has delivered strong ROI for hundreds of businesses while attracting over 8,000 attendees.

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

The business actually came about by accident. I started a women’s-only Facebook group to share personal tips and recommendations, but the response showed something really unexpected: there was enormous demand for authentic, trust-driven business recommendations within the British Asian community.

It completely snowballed! Friends and family began inviting more and more people, and they were asking for everything: from accountants who understood their family business structures, to suppliers who could source specific (oftentimes) cultural products. The demand was incredible, so much so that I started a spin-off group, and that’s now bigger than the original.

I began to see this as a genuine B2B opportunity. Unlike traditional networking groups that focus on selling to each other, our communities became platforms where businesses could access genuine consumer insights and build relationships with their target demographics organically.

We had identified a major gap in B2B marketing: the difficulty of authentically connecting with our community’s demographics. Traditional marketing approaches often miss the nuanced needs of the British Asian community, and they also overlook small businesses.

Tell us about your core service

Through ProfessionalAsian we provide access to highly engaged business audiences through our trust-based community platform.

For consumer facing companies, we offer direct access to decision-makers who actively seek recommendations via RecommendAsian. Our success stories include businesses like cleaning services becoming fully booked within hours of posting, a tiffin service gaining 45 clients in two weeks, and a Gujarati-language nursery rhyme product selling 200 units in just two days.

For B2B services, ProfessionalAsian offers genuine networking opportunities and collaborations. Legal firms, accountants, financial services providers, and all sorts of professional consultants use our platform to build relationships and generate leads through community endorsements. They find it far more effective than cold outreach.

We also deliver in-person networking events and exhibitions, creating hybrid online-offline marketing strategies that many B2B companies find challenging to execute successfully.

What most excites you about the B2B community-building industry?

The industry is experiencing a shift from traditional advertising toward relationship-driven business development. Small business owners are increasingly sceptical of traditional advertising and look for trusted peer recommendations and community validation before making purchasing decisions.

Community-driven platforms like ours tend to deliver far better ROI compared to traditional B2B marketing channels. Our organic reach consistently outperforms paid social media campaigns, and the conversion rates are great, because recommendations come from trusted community members rather than paid ads.

B2B companies are also beginning to cotton on to the fact that authentic community engagement provides market intelligence you simply can’t buy elsewhere. When you’re having face-to-face conversations, you understand your customers’ pain points, identify product gaps, and spot emerging trends. You can address these issues and, more often than not, close deals on the spot.
That’s what makes our communities so rewarding.

What has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome along the way?

For me that’s been scaling community management whilst maintaining the trust and engagement levels that make us so valuable to our B2B partners. Growing to over 170,000 combined members means we’ve had to develop systems to prevent spam, at the same time as providing genuine value for businesses.

We’ve also had to keep a good the balance between providing business opportunities for our members and making sure the community doesn’t become overly commercial, which would damage the authentic engagement that makes us valuable to SME partners.

What is your number one piece of advice to aspiring entrepreneurs?

Focus on building genuine value for your customers before monetising. Too many entrepreneurs start with revenue models rather than addressing community needs. We didn’t spend money on advertising because we prioritised serving our community’s real problems, which created organic word-of-mouth that’s more valuable than paid acquisition.

Also, understand that authentic community building takes time but generates better long-term business results than quick-win marketing tactics. The trust and engagement levels we’ve achieved can’t be bought – it has to be earned through consistent delivery.

What can we hope to see from RecommendAsian and ProfessionalAsian in the future?

We’re always responding to our community’s needs. We’re expanding our offline presence through professional networking events and our shopping event, Hey Gorgeous, which has attracted more than 8,000 attendees and provides a platform for hundreds of small businesses to showcase their products and services face-to-face twice a year.

I’m also exploring ways to better support the entrepreneurial talent within our communities through workshops, mentoring programmes, and strategic business support. I really hope the success stories we’ve witnessed are just the beginning.

There’s so much potential within the British Asian community, and it deserves recognition and support.

Our mission for SMEs remains the same: empowering small business owners. The journey keeps evolving, and with every new initiative, I’m reminded of the strength and determination of the community and the incredible things we can achieve together.