For many parents in the UAE, a child’s birthday invitation comes with another question: what do you buy for a child you may barely know?
It is a problem Salman Yousuf noticed repeatedly while living in the UAE, where children’s birthday parties can be a regular fixture on family calendars. His curiosity eventually led him to speak to more than 300 parents across the country about how they shop for toys and gifts.
The conversations ultimately became the foundation for Toy Souk, which Yousuf launched in December 2025 as what he says is the UAE’s first AI-enabled dedicated toy marketplace.
“The word I kept hearing, from almost everyone, was ‘nightmare’,” Yousuf, founder and CEO of Toy Souk, told Khaleej Times.
“Buying a toy for your own child is one thing. You know what they like, you know what they have, and honestly, if they love it, you’ll spend whatever it takes. But buying for someone else’s child for a birthday party is a completely different experience.”
According to Yousuf, parents he surveyed reported their children attending an average of around two birthday parties a month, potentially creating 24 gifting occasions per child each year.
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For working parents, he said, finding something appropriate, within budget and useful to the recipient can become a recurring task.
But another scenario repeatedly surfaced during his conversations with parents: taking their own child along to buy the present.
“You take your own child to the toy shop to buy a birthday present for their friend. Big mistake. Because your child wants everything,” he said. “You walk in for one toy and you walk out having bought two, one for the friend, one to avoid the meltdown.”
Asking AI instead of scrolling
Toy Souk’s answer to the problem is Buddy the Bear, an AI-powered toy advisor built into the online marketplace.
Rather than asking parents to scroll through hundreds of products, Buddy starts a conversation and asks for information including the child’s age, interests, the occasion and the shopper’s budget.
A parent could, for example, specify that they are shopping for a six-year-old who enjoys animals, with a budget of Dh100.
The AI then matches those details against Toy Souk’s catalogue and recommends a product, along with an explanation of why it may suit the child.
“The experience is designed to feel like asking a knowledgeable friend rather than using a search engine,” Yousuf said.
He argues that this is where the technology differs from the filters already common across e-commerce platforms.
“If you filter by ‘age 5, under Dh100,’ you might still get 80 results and feel no more confident than when you started,” he said.
“Buddy is active; it makes a recommendation and explains why.”
Can AI choose an appropriate toy?
When children are involved, however, recommendations also need to account for age and developmental suitability.
Yousuf said age acts as a mandatory filter within Buddy, preventing it from recommending products outside the appropriate age range entered by the parent.
Products are also categorised according to developmental areas such as fine motor skills, imaginative play, early STEM engagement and social play.
“Even if a parent provides only basic information, Buddy defaults to recommendations that are appropriate for the developmental stage associated with that age, erring on the side of safety and suitability,” he said.
Toy Souk also says products are vetted for authenticity, safety certification and age appropriateness before being added to its catalogue.
Parents are asking for more than birthday presents
While birthday gifting helped inspire the platform, Yousuf said early user behaviour suggests parents are turning to the AI assistant for other occasions as well.
“We expected most interactions to be birthday-focused, but we’ve seen parents using Buddy for Eid gifts, for rewards after school achievements, and simply to find something educational for rainy days,” he said.
Another trend has been parents’ interest in understanding why a particular toy has been recommended rather than simply accepting the AI-generated suggestion.
Educational and STEM toys have also performed strongly, according to Yousuf.
“UAE parents are deeply invested in their children’s development, and that shows clearly in what actually gets purchased versus what gets browsed,” he said.
Since launching in December, Toy Souk has grown to more than 1,000 products from over 30 vendor partners, according to figures provided by the company. It says the platform has attracted more than 17,000 users and close to 48,000 page views in its first eight months.
For Yousuf, however, the idea still comes back to the problem he heard about hundreds of times before launching the business: making the next birthday invitation a little less stressful for parents.
Source: Khaleej Times