It can happen at any time, anywhere: a mechanical car breakdown or an accident, miles from help. With the advent of MayDay, we can all breathe a little more easily. Head of Business Development & Founding Partner Mohamed Abo El Fotouh brings us up to speed on how MayDay can save your day.

What motivated you to start MayDay?

The concept was created as a result of a personal experience when one of the founders’ family members was left stranded on the side of the road for over two hours waiting for help. The thought just came to us, “How can we make roadside assistance interactions more reliable, safer, timely and easier to manage?”

What is the core of your business? Delivering roadside assistance and other automotive services to motorists in need via a technology enabled platform that connects users with the nearest capable provider ready to help.

Has MayDay been difficult to set up and operate? There was a learning curve in at the start as we worked to build a large network of reliable and qualified service providers across multiple cities in Egypt.

How long was the process of putting things into action?

We were established in June 2018 and it took us approximately 6 months to setup shop, hire a capable team, finalize our software, run some pilots and build our supplier network. We were officially live and accepting requests by January 2019.

What challenges have you come up against?

Being a start-up cash flow is always a concern to monitor and it was surely not easy to find the right talent that early on in our company’s life.

What work backgrounds does your team come from?

Our team has a diverse set of solid experiences across multiple fields from technology, operations, business development to marketing and customer service.

How quickly have you been able to carve out your niche in the market?

We’ve had the good fortune of gaining traction quickly, building a strong name for ourselves through a superior level of quality, improved reliability, wider reach and fixed pricing models.

What is the edge in your service?

A wide network of providers enables us to react faster and in a more cost effective manner compared to our competitors. Technology also helps us monitor our ongoing requests and provides us with the data we need to evolve our operational model. Our diverse team as well has given us a key advantage when competing in the market.

In a digital age, what are the benefits of using a tech platform to coordinate services?

Utilizing technology enables us to provide a more real-time service and enables us to learn from analysing the data pool we’ve collected to enhance our offering to customers. In addition, a major source of revenue is the result of our digital media campaigns, enabling us to reach our customers effectively and accurately.

How did you identify the need for your service in the community?

We ran a survey to better understand the market, customer needs and pain points to find a sweet spot that would make sense for us and validate the business model.

Where, and how, do you think you fill a gap in what is already available?

More reliable service that offers a fixed price and 24/7 support. Our application also includes multiple safety features to ensure that every customer is back on the road safely within minutes.

Where do you see your opportunities for further growth and expansion?

We aim to grow to new markets outside Egypt by 2020, in addition to expanding our set of services beyond roadside assistance and into other automotive services offered to car owners.

Contact Information:

Web: www.getmayday.io

In a world where the giant chains and conglomerates seem to be ubiquitous, Egypt still depends to a huge extent on a plethora of small kiosks and corner shops to serve cities, villages and communities across the country. In order for these little businesses to meet demand with competitive prices, there had to be a way to get the products to the customer, efficiently and cost effectively, without a middle man. We chatted with Belal El-Megharbel, Co-Founder and CEO at MaxAB, to see how it all works.

What motivated you to start MaxAB?

MaxAB was started to bridge the gap between traditional retailers and FMCGs. The retailers account for 90% of the industry and intermediaries were creating unnecessary costs and affecting their profit margins. We knew we had to step in and change things.

What is the basis of your business?

We connect retailers and FMCGs through the use of technology. From start to finish, we are working to ensure that the food and grocery ecosystem is organized and efficient. We provide services that range from economics, logistics and warehousing, to access, to credit facilities. We cover the entire spectrum for all key players in the industry.

What challenges have you come up against?

As entrepreneurs, the main challenge we faced in Egypt was hiring quality talent. Unfortunately, we have been brain drained for the past decade or so. But we are trying to break this stigma, by creating real opportunities and have successfully convinced top talent to move back and help us build MaxAB.

What about your team?

The team brings together experience from Careem and Aramex.

How quickly have you been able to establish yourself in the market?

Since we started operations in November 2018, we have recorded 50% month-on-month growth.

What makes your service stand out?

So far, no one has been able to successfully serve retailers. We know the market is highly fragmented and there is little or no data to support the field force of FMCGs.  What MaxAB does is place the power in the hands of the retailer. We are in the best position to understand the retailers and build a strategy accordingly.

What about opportunities for further growth and expansion?

The market is still very untapped and unaccounted for. MaxAB aims to reach 50% of Egypt’s population within the next two years and reorganize the market using technology.

How useful has it been to have a tech platform to coordinate services?

Technology simplifies processes that would otherwise have been done manually. For example, retailers can place orders on-demand and access brand promotion materials using our app. All of this is then delivered to the retailer at the same time. The data recorded from these transactions then helps us tailor services to better suit the retailer such as offering credit facilities.

Contact Information

Website: www.maxab.io

Email: info@maxab.io

Sometimes an existing service or industry can benefit from innovations and a new approach. Trella has made its point by doing just that. We learn more from Co-founder Omar Hagrass about how the Trella App has revolutionized the complex process of coordinating shipping and freight.

What services does Trella provide?

Trella is a technology platform that connects shippers to carriers in the widely fragmented freight

industry. Its mission is to induce structure with a goal of improving efficiency throughout the

entire supply chain. The vision is to empower carriers through intelligently moving freight,

creating unprecedented economic opportunities in the logistics space while allowing shippers to

book reliable, affordable and high-quality loads.

How long was the process of putting Trella together, from idea to reality?

The process took one year before the actual implementation. The one year consisted of

company legal set up, funding initiatives, fact finding missions and industry market research.

What challenges did you come up against?

This industry has been there for over 100 years, depending solely on paper. One of our biggest

challenges wasentering a market that lacks tech knowledge and basic literacy needs and shift it

all to the tech world.

Tell us about your team?

Our team comes from diverse backgrounds, including consulting, investment banking,

and a series of tech backgrounds such as: OLX, Vezeeta, and Uber.

How quickly have you been able to carve out your niche in themarket?

Besides cementing our position as the go-to logistics solution in Egypt, our team has managed

to sign a global partnership with the largest O&G player in the world in just 7 months of

operations. As well, we carry out thousands of loads every month, generating millions of

dollars in annualized revenues and receive multi-million dollar investments to expand our

services across the region.

What is the edge in theservice you provide?

There are very few competitors who are investing in this tech and truly adding value to the

market. While other players are merely tech-enabled truck brokerage companies. Trella is the

key to create a smoother and quicker flow of goods in the region

Where do you see your opportunities for further growth and expansion?

Within Egypt there are around 1.4 million registered trucks, this shows just how much we can

grow within Egypt alone.

Our business is scalable on two fronts:

1: Geographically: The MENA region is a limitless frontier for Trella in the provision of trucking

solutions to shippers and job opportunities to carriers. Countries such as Saudi Arabia and

Morocco are ideal locations for us in terms of volumes transported.

2: Product: Expanding into different truck types, industries and types of freight, such as cross-borders

etc.

In a digital age, what are the benefits of using a tech platform to coordinate services?

The tech platform has been opening endless efficient doors through intelligent matching, route

optimization and a digitized POD process. Hence, we can optimize dispatch and limit dead

hauls to improve truck efficiency. Investing in cargo pooling technology will also allow us to

make use of LTL shipments to improve container utilization for further overall efficiency gains.

Trella

Facebook: @trellaapp

We recently caught up with Karim Abobakr, Co-Founder of Mirqah, to learn more about the successful trajectory the company has followed since its launch.

Tell us about the moment that you and your co-founders realized that you had a concept that could become a reality.

We are three co-founders. Karim El Mehairy who is now finishing his Doctoral studies in Education at Oxford University. Sherif Tharwat who has since moved on to start Seasoned, a food and beverage establishment, and myself coming from a medical background and specializing in workplace mental health. In 2007, we joined forces and expressed a common interest in creating something that would benefit the community. After some experimentation and choosing what we were collectively the most skilled at doing, we focused on adult education in the workplace. Within a couple of years, we developed a deep appreciation for managers and the value they add both to their organizations and to society at large. From that point, our mission was pretty concrete: help organizations in educating and developing their managers.

In a nutshell, how would you describe the core services that Mirqah provides?

We help organizations grow managers through educational programs that mix the academic rigor of post-graduate degrees and the pragmatism of training. Our programs target improving management practice in three main areas: creating healthy and empowering workplaces, delivering quality products and services, and operating sustainably and profitably. Our customers are typically large multinationals and high-growth small and medium enterprises.

Was it a challenge to found the organization and create a demand for what you offer?

While I think the journey presented numerous challenges, we have luckily maintained a clear, competitive edge since those early days due to our research and development capabilities. We gained our first big customer, Etisalat (whom we have served for almost 11 years to date!), and started building a good reputation. We then started receiving recommendations and acquiring new clients. I believe in this age of digital marketing lots of budding entrepreneurs undermine the power of a reputation built from the ground up through serving customers and creating value.

One thing that I believe also really helped us is how much time and money we invested in our own development as people. Throughout the years we have maintained a policy of retaining as much profit within the business to grow it. Much of that profit went into hiring and further experimentation, especially with technology. And some of it went into building ourselves professionally through travel, courses, and post-graduate degrees. We now extend this same philosophy to our employees through funding their post-graduate education.

How did you identify the need for your services in the business community?

Through proximity to our customers. I think that is the way it should be done; get close to your customers, ask, listen and observe. We tend to idolize ideas and see them as the only possible starting point of a business, however that encourages you to incessantly keep fighting for a particular idea. I don’t think that fixation is particularly healthy. Working closely with customers and experimenting with an open mind allows you to truly hone your proposition. It takes some degree of perseverance and patience, but it can be immensely rewarding in more than one way.

As an organization that teaches and leads, how have your structured your team to meet the criteria you promote?

It might sound like a cliché, but it really is all about the team. We have had some brilliant minds throughout the years contribute so much to Mirqah. Creating an environment where people are treated with respect and where they are truly allowed to express their abilities and pursue their intellectual passions is key. This necessitated maintaining a level of flexibility in what we do and often shaping the business around the interests and capabilities of those working in it.

Where next? Any expansion plans or new developments?

We are currently focused on widening access to our programs in the Middle East and Africa. Longer term, we are working towards bettering management practice and research in the Global South.

We have also launched Mirqah Media Lab as a venture builder. Media Lab houses technologists and product owners who work together to create and spin off digital products that help solve organizational problems. We currently have two products in the pipeline: Learmapp™, a mobile-based learning social network that maps learning ecologies and Traders™, a web-based game that teaches managerial finance and accounting.

Contact Information

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/mirqah

Web: www.mirqah.com

Facebook: @mirqah