Elara - Self-Knowledge and Meeting People, Inside Telegram

Challenge

Meeting new people online in Iran is a trust problem before it is a product problem. Standalone apps are hard to install and hard to trust, profiles are often fake, and handing over a phone number to a stranger is a real risk, so most people never get past the first screen. The challenge was to remove every barrier to entry at once: no download, no sign-up form, no phone number shared, and no feed of strangers you have no reason to talk to.

Solution

I led and built Elara as a Telegram mini app, so it opens inside a messenger people already trust: nothing to install, and login is the Telegram account itself. The product is built around a simple idea: know yourself first. Fourteen established self-knowledge tests, fully translated and written for Persian speakers with a real analysis for every result, feed a matching engine that suggests people whose type fits yours, so a conversation starts with something in common instead of a photo. Around that sit a Hafez fortune everyone in Iran already knows, a proper real-time messenger with voice messages, reactions, replies, stories and in-chat games, and a safety layer that is the heart of the product: every profile is verified manually against a short video and an ID document that are reviewed and then deleted, phone numbers are never exposed to anyone, and reports lead to a real review, ban and appeal flow run from a full admin panel.

Key Features

• 14 Persian Self-Knowledge Tests, With Written Analysis
• Personality-Based Matching, Not Just Photos
• Real-Time Chat: Voice, Reactions, Stories, Games
• Manual Identity Verification & Full Moderation Flow

Project Process

Results