Author: Staff Writer

Swvl Raises $42 Million for African Expansion

Swvl, an Egypt-based app for booking buses, has raised $42 million as it plans to expand into other African markets, including Nigeria.

The two-year-old startup, which started in Cairo, and operates in Alexandria and Nairobi in Kenya, got the money from venture-capital firms, including Sweden’s Vostok, Dubai-based BECO Capital, China’s MSA and Endeavor Catalyst, based in New York. Reported Bloomberg.

“The plan is to be in at least two or three more African cities by the end of the year,’’ said Mostafa Kandil, Swvl’s founder and chief executive officer. “Lagos, Nigeria, is most likely the next market.’’

Swvl carries hundreds of thousands of customers each month, according to Kandil, an engineering graduate who once worked for Careem, which was acquired by Uber this year.

Uber and Careem have launched bus services in Cairo in the past year. Along with Swvl, they’re exploiting growing demand among the city’s 20 million people for transport options cheaper than taxis but more convenient than public buses, which are often perceived as unreliable and dangerous.

June 20, 2019
Don’t Overlook the Importance of Your Shipping Materials

We live in an advanced world where technology seems to be everywhere. Pretty much every device that you use in your daily life has at least some aspect of technology involved in the manufacturing process, or it may even contain at least some aspect of technology.

If you are in the business of manufacturing parts for computers or other delicate technical items, you probably need to ship your products to the customer. Since they are very delicate and can become damaged if not handled properly, it is important that you package them properly so that they can withstand the shipping process. You want to make a good impression on your customer, so you want your product to arrive in perfect condition.

If your product arrives broken, it will not only make a bad impression on your customer, but they are not likely going to order from you again. You may have the very best products on the market, but unless you can ship them properly, that doesn’t matter.

The Different Types of Cardboard

Cardboard is also very versatile and there are different types of cardboard. Some cardboard is very thin while other types of cardboard are thicker. The thicker type is used for making strong boxes, and the thinner type can be used to wrap items to protect them so that they do not get broken when they are shipped.

It Offers Protection

Cardboard offers a lot of cushion for shipping items, especially for fragile items, and protects your product from getting damaged during the shipping process. The corrugated layers makes cardboard boxes more durable and eliminates the need for a lot of additional packing materials. It is also less expensive to manufacture, which means that it will help to keep your costs low. A large portion of the budget for many companies goes towards shipping and packaging costs. If you can reduce those costs, you will be able to keep more money in your pocket.

Shop For Shipping Materials From the Professionals

High-quality boxes, such as Bolt Boxes, let you customize the style and size of the box that you need so that you can put your best foot forward and present your product and company the way that you want to. When you order your packaging materials from a company that specializes in creating custom boxes, you will have more say as far as customization goes. The people at Bolt Boxes have capabilities and expertise in flexo, litho, and digital printing that allows them to offer solutions for a range of print quality needs. You will also be able to buy in bulk to help reduce the cost of your shipping materials.

Choose the Right Shipping Materials

Shipping plays a very big role in the success of your business. You want your shipping materials to be made of high-quality materials and to be durable enough to withstand the transportation and shipping process. You also want your packing materials to convey the message that your product is also of high-quality and that you care about customer service. In other words, your shipping box should tell your customer that you want them to be happy from the time they order your product to the day that it arrives on their doorstep.

Cardboard is very easy to seal as well since you can stick glue or tape to it easily. It is not difficult to work with. This means that you won’t have a hard time getting your products wrapped up and ready to ship. They will also stay sealed until they reach the customer.

Packaging Doubles as Another Way to Advertise

Not only does packaging offer protection for your products, but it is also another way that you can advertise your product and company. It is essentially another selling point. You could even display how to use your product and other information about your product on the packaging so that your customer will have easy access to that important information. Many companies use their packaging materials to tell a little more about their product; to tell the story of how their company began or to display their company logo.

Cardboard Boxes Are Environmentally Friendly

Using cardboard boxes for your packaging material helps to reduce the impact on the environment since cardboard is recyclable and is also biodegradable. It can even be made of recycled materials.

June 19, 2019
Facebook Announces Cryptocurrency ‘Libra’, Digital Wallet ‘Calibra’

Yesterday, Facebook has shared plans for Calibra, a digital wallet for Libra, a new global currency powered by blockchain technology. The wallet will be available in Messenger, WhatsApp and as a standalone app — and we expect to launch in 2020.

Calibra will let users send Libra to anyone with a smartphone, as easily and instantly as you might send a text message and at low to no cost.

Facebook also plans to offer additional services for people and businesses, like paying bills with the push of a button, buying a cup of coffee with the scan of a code or riding your local public transit without needing to carry cash or a metro pass.

Here’s a sneak peek at what the experience of using Calibra will be like:

Source: Facebook

The company covered security concerns from the beginning. Facebook said “We’ll be using all the same verification and anti-fraud processes that banks and credit cards use, and we’ll have automated systems that will proactively monitor activity to detect and prevent fraudulent behavior. We’ll also offer dedicated live support to help if you lose your phone or your password — and if someone fraudulently gains access to your account and you lose some Libra as a result, we’ll offer you a refund.”

On the privacy level, Facebook’s Calibra will not share account information or financial data with Facebook or any third party without customer consent.

What differentiates “Libra” from other existing cryptocurrencies?

Facebook’s Libra has a strong network of partners even before the official launch in 2020.

Libra network of partners

With the help of such a strong network of partners and being one of Facebook’s products, Libra could change the world in a very short time.

Let us know your thoughts.

June 19, 2019
Egyptian Startup Mumm Launches ‘Mumm Prime’ Egypt’s First Premium Chef

Egypt’s homemade food service Mumm has launched “Mumm Prime”, Egypt’s premium online chef subscription service on Sunday. For an affordable monthly subscription fee; the service offers customers clean, freshly cooked homemade food for the same price of its raw supermarket ingredients.

Saving time and effort on daily chores and money on monthly household budget; Mumm Prime also gives its customers the convenience of ordering for next day or prescheduling their meals for up to a week in advance.

The Mumm Prime service launch marks the latest success in Mumm Prime’s significantly fast expansion in the Egyptian market since its initial launch to a limited segment of the market as a closed beta on the 2nd of April.

Soft launching in Tagamoa and Downtown areas on the 5th of May by Mumm, local homemade food startup, Mumm Prime garnered highly positive feedback; facilitating its market growth and setting ground for its delivery coverage expansion to all of Mumm’s active delivery locations last Thursday.

Parallel to its launch, Mumm attracted many partnerships with giant household names in the industry; including Etisalat, Kiri, and Nestle.

Fadi Antaki, CEO of A15 and one of Mumm’s primary investors, expressed faith in Mumm Prime’s promising potential in the market. “This expansion is just the beginning. Mumm Prime is not only the first Chef subscription service in Egypt and the Middle East, it’s also an intuitive solution to a growing demand in the lives of modernday Egyptian working mothers that wouldn’t have been possible without the technology and economies of scale that the team has built the past years.”

According to the May 2019 issue of World Bank’s Women Economic Empowerment Study; 91 percent of surveyed women reported spending an inordinate amount of time on unpaid household activities, and 27 percent reported that they perform unpaid care for family members, the value of which the survey estimated at EGP 496 billion. Moreover, survey findings also show that domestic unpaid work for married women does not decrease when they join the labour market, resulting in women spending almost equal hours on unpaid domestic work a week as they do in their fulltime jobs.

Giving people access to freshlycooked, clean homemade food for the highly affordable price of its raw supermarket ingredients, Mumm Prime presents working mothers with an opportunity to alleviate their household responsibilities on the consumer end and to increase their incomes on the homecook end. Expressing optimism for the future of Mumm Prime, Sharif ElBadawi, Partner at 500 Startups and a primary investor in Mumm, remarked: “Mumm’s readiness and success in the Mumm Prime launch goes to show the operational efficiency of the product, and the startup’s quick response to emerging demand. I have absolute confidence in its imminent prosperity and longterm scalability, and I’m looking forward to seeing Mumm Prime in every Egyptian home.”

Expanding on the concept of a homemade food subscription service; Waleed Abdelrahman, CEO and founder of Mumm, explains: “For the low subscription fee of EGP 300, working mothers everywhere can get the grueling chores of grocery shopping, food preparation, cooking, dishwashing and cleaning off their hands; saving them time, effort and money.” He adds: “Mumm Prime is more than a food subscription service, it’s the concept of a new lifestyle where working women don’t have to do twice the work on a normal week day, but rather focus on what really matters to them.”

Protected by local and international hygiene certifications, Mumm Prime kitchens are inspected against 99 international quality standards by a HACCPcertified hygiene doctor on a regular and surprise basis, the approved chefs are certified by the Ministry of Health and all Mumm Prime meals go through a tasting panel before making it to the final menu. Ensuring a transparent feedback process, the menu items are also publicly rated by the consumers on the website.

Commenting on Mumm Prime’s health features, which include displaying the nutritional components and calorie count of each meal, Waleed Abdelrahman added: “We have a lot of features in the pipeline for the upcoming months that will continuously improve this premium package as a staple in the daily lives of thousands of people throughout Egypt.”

Since its launch in 2015, Mumm has been connecting hungry professionals with over 200 active kitchens around Cairo; providing them with a large variety of single, familysized and frozen homemade meals for an affordable price tag.

Adapting Egyptian, Arab and international cuisine into its recipes, Mumm meals attracted a lot of regular customers from different walks of life; including busy corporate employees, single parents, independent millennials and thriving baby boomers at the peak of their careers. Mumm continues to attract different segments of the Egyptian society with its affordable, adaptive offerings and easytouse online platform.

May 21, 2019
Egypt’s Direxiona wins 50,000 euro-prize in AFD Digital Challenge

Egypt’s Direxiona matching platform for women drivers and instructors has won the first prize in the AFD Digital Challenge competition at total amount of 50,000 euros.

The award was granted by the AFD, France’s inclusive public development bank, under the title “Digital Challenge Success” for two African startups at a value of 50,000 euros per each.

Direxiona is Egypt’s first online platform that designed for each Egyptian girl to help her find her match with the nearest female driving instructors, based on time and location.

According to the competition organizers, the rewarding two startups must be through the expansion phase and demonstrating an outstanding ability to scale up and develop.

The competition is mainly aiming to promote entrepreneurial initiatives managed by women and/or men, tackling the challenges of women’s inclusion and gender inequalities – whether social, economic, cultural or political – and leveraging digital innovation for their development.

Founded in 2017, the Cairo-based startup Direxiona aims to support more women who want to learn how to drive by using an online platform to match them to female driving instructors. It is essentially a driving platform and community for women by women.

Nayrouz Talaat, Direxiona Founder and CEO says: “We are also working on leading the service to be solely technology-based and delivering the idea of driving through technological tools to raise the performance of the trainers,” Talaat added.

“In Egypt, there was a larger number of girls and women who wanted to learn how to drive and to be more independent but could not do so. Beyond safety concerns, this is mainly because the number of female instructors is low and they are difficult to find and contact.

Through a network of 85 field offices, the AFD currently finance, monitor, and assist more than 2,500 development projects in 108 countries in sectors of energy, healthcare, biodiversity, water, digital technology, and professional training.

About 15 applications were short-listed by AFD experts from among the 300 received, based on their relevance, sustainability and impact on development. A panel of judges made up of six digital technology experts then whittled this list down to choose the 5 winning projects.

May 18, 2019
8 Ways You Can Train Your Brain to Outsmart Decision Fatigue

Even if you aren’t a morning person, staying sharp throughout the workday can be difficult if you’ve had little sleep. But did you know, your brain can also become tired from making too many decisions? Decision fatigue happens when you lose energy and focus because of the mental drain from making decisions.

We make anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 decisions each day, from deciding what to eat (or not eat) to deciding whether we can make it through that stoplight. You can imagine that even more important decisions that involve relationships or higher risks can cause us much more stress. Decision fatigue can also lead to poorer decisions and lower productivity. At work, you may make careless mistakes causing you more effort later.

Luckily, there are some ways to combat decision fatigue by training your brain and organizing aspects of your life to take some of the work out of making decisions. Mint created this infographic that includes 8 tips to avoid decision fatigue so you can be more productive and stress-free. From altering your diet to planning your schedule, you can make small changes to simplify your day.

Credit: www.mint.com

May 17, 2019
What Can a Digital Commerce Company Do For You?

In today’s market, just graduating from college is a success to celebrate. Many people sit around and wonder what they are going to be doing after college. The digital commerce business is growing every year. More companies and businesses build their audience every month with the help of digital commerce companies.

No matter what path you decide to take after college, a digital commerce company like OMG Commerce can help you grow the business you’ve been trained to run.

SEO Writing

One of the first things a good company can help you with is SEO writing. SEO writing will improve your digital presence on the Internet. Good writers will start by producing or redoing your current content. They will dissect every aspect of your content to make sure that your content completely matches and advances the purpose of your business. Excellent quality SEO writing will produce more natural traffic flow to your business. Organic traffic comes to your site from search engines. Both the writing and the organic traffic flow will generate authority for you and your business in your given niche.

Organic Traffic Flow to Conversions

Generating organic traffic flow is only the first step. Turning the traffic flow into conversions is another matter. These converted sales drive traffic further and help build your business. Converted sales mean increased business for you. Many converted sales can easily lead to repeat customers.

Many digital SEO companies will help you track sales metrics. You can discover what the customers are searching for in comparison to what they are buying. This knowledge can lead to organic lead generation as they mold your business into exactly what your customers are searching.

Once the level of customers increases, the organic traffic flow will improve your website via search rankings. The higher your website ranks with the search engines the more visibility you will have in the search results. Meaning, your website will be closer to page one if the search results for your niche business.

Ad Programs

While ad programs are a great way to generate organic traffic flow, many people have to resort to running ads on various services to increase their visibility to their customer bases.

An excellent digital commerce company will not only help you plan but help you manage when and where your ads should be running.

Using Google Ads is one of the most popular services in today’s market. Many of the best services will work generously with Google Ads. Using search data can help you grow your business. Knowing what ads are generating leads can aide the SEO company to determine if your ads are working and what they can adjust to create more leads and more conversions.

Amazon is another service that is growing in popularity. Running ads on a massive service like Amazon can generate tons of organic sales for your business. The higher conversions you get, the greater the chance of repeat business.

Youtube is a third service that can be a great help. A high-quality service will help analyze when and where to run your ads. Youtube use has risen to the point it is a tremendous agent to generate organic traffic flow. You can reach a market that you otherwise would not be able too.

Brand Identity

Your business is dependent on your brand’s identity. Companies can help determine what your business is trying to sell or produce. They can help you tweak things like your business logo, domain name, and contact information.

Information like this seems simple but coordinating your image across all platforms is paramount to maintaining your customer base. It is easier for your customers to reach your business if it looks the same from platform to platform.

As college graduates journey into the workforce, some of you will not want to jump right into running your own business. Many SEO service companies hire high-quality workers to service a multitude of people. Most of them have access to training programs and the best tools.

Whatever way you wish to go after college, the growing field of e-commerce is going to have a hand in it. Odds are your business will have to deal with commerce in the e-sector at some time or another.

May 9, 2019
3 Things You Should And Shouldn’t Do To Make Meetings Productive
It is necessary for every company to hold a workplace meeting every once in a while. The meetings are essential because it allows interaction for different departments within the company. However, there’s the truth that a lot of meetings are a waste of time when not done properly. On the other hand, a lively, collaborative, and productive meeting can help the company move forward. Here are the three do’s and don’ts that a manager should consider before, during, and after meetings.

3 Do’s For Productive Meeting
1. Use of a Conference Room Scheduling System
A conference room scheduling system is a software that notifies people who are needed in the meeting real time. It also includes features that lets involved parties to know in real time if the meeting was canceled or if the location was changed. This way, miscommunication should be avoided and the meeting would start without any additional problems.
1. List the Meeting Agenda Before Starting
A meeting is an activity where a team discusses things that are important and essential in the company’s operation. To save time, it is recommended to list the agenda of the meeting before it even starts. Add the meeting agenda in the announcement so the involved parties can prepare additional documents when necessary. This way, the team will not be wasting time figuring out what are the things needed to be discussed.
1. Make The Meetings Concise And Brief
When you and your team members can sort problems and plan for solutions quickly, it gives you more time doing more things. Making meetings unnecessarily long will not make it more productive. It can even lead to a lot of distractions, like the discussion straying from the original topic. If there are a lot of topics to be discussed on the agenda, you can opt to divide the topics into different meetings. If a long meeting is needed for clarifying details or brainstorming, make sure to let your team have a break once in a while.

3 Don’ts To Avoid In Meetings
1. Hold Meetings For The Sake Of Schedule
Department meetings every Wednesday or Friday? Weekly management meeting every Monday morning? Monthly meetings at the end of the month? Although it is a good habit to check the teams from time to time, meetings without an agenda and just for the sake of scheduling are time wasted. Only hold a meeting if there are things needing to be discussed.

There are ways to check your teams for notable problems, like talking to the leader and checking on the problems in the department. If there is a notable problem, then that’s the time you’ll need to hold a meeting.
1. Waiting For Other Meeting Participants After The Time Started
All meetings should be started on time, regardless of who can attend or not. Running late is never a valid excuse to wait for someone during a meeting unless the key person is the one who’s running late (it happens in rare cases because of the unforeseen circumstances).

It is also important to mention that holding the time of other people just to wait for a person is not a good idea. If the key person failed to show up 15 to 30 minutes after the meeting started, postponing the meeting and moving it to another time might be a better choice. This is because time is a precious asset, and making the most out of it is essential to the company’s growth.
1. Letting Something Disrupt The Meeting
During a meeting, the focus of everyone participating should be on the topic or issue being discussed. Therefore, meeting disruptions such as a sudden ringing of phones or people doing other jobs while in the room should be avoided. The task of taking notes should be designated to a member of the team and they should focus on it. Notebooks and notepads are good things to have during a meeting.

A meeting is an essential part of the company’s planning and development of projects that will help it grow and expand its operations. In order to improve cooperation, face to face interaction is needed. To call it a success, the agenda listed should have solutions and finalization by the end of the meeting.
April 19, 2019
Why Access Management Matters In This Day and Age

Access management can be accurately described as a holistic way of managing a secure interaction within a specified system. By managing, I simply mean controlling, identifying, tracking as well as allowing access to authorized individuals. Those who aren’t authorized will automatically be shut out of the system for security reasons. Normally, Access Management (AM) is usually coupled with identity access management (IAM).

With identity access management, the security of the system is intensified in that it can now control different groups, roles, users, roles and so on. The latter therefore compliments access management which only caters for policies and roles. Feel free to check out One Identity for more information about access management and its importance. Here are the top five benefits associated with access management:

Reporting and auditing is made easier

Thanks to the fact that the login information can be stored in the system, it becomes a lot easier for auditing as well as reporting. This feature not only allows for the IT department to know exactly where an employee has signed in from but can also pinpoint the exact location of the area where a hacker is.

That’s in case an employee has the misfortune of having their credentials compromised. The IT people can also know the data that was compromised and therefore come up with the perfect solution to the breach. Running analytical reports has also been made easier thanks to access management apps.

User experience is definitely better

Let’s just be honest for a second. Writing passwords over and over again can be one hectic state of affairs, let alone remembering them. Thankfully, access management makes logins much easier by eliminating the whole nightmare. This is usually achieved by the system remembering your email and password.

Therefore, every single time you may want to get into the system, all you need to do is press enter and you’ll be good to go. The same goes when you have different passwords for different areas of the system. All you’ll need is to go to the area which you want to enter and click in.

Ensures more secure profiles

Just because the digital world keeps developing, such as Snapchat with a new snap kit, it is very important that businesses take access management with a grain of salt. Why is that? Because with every stride technology takes, so does the threats that come with it. But with good access management in place, you won’t have to worry about unauthorized access to your system.

Access management tools increase the level of productivity

Since access management allows your employers to gain secure access from any part of the world, it will become a tad easier for them to work even during their downtime. And when this happens, always expect the level of productivity to increase which is also a dream come true for most business owners.

Your IT costs will dramatically be reduced

With reliable access management installed in your system, you’ll find that most of the things, such as an internal help desk, will be eliminated. You can also have the system do analytics as well as extensive audit trails without having to rely on an IT technician who, you’ve guessed it, will want money for their services.

When all is said and done, access management is meant to improve the general efficiency in one particular system. It is, therefore, an incredible idea for you to not only have one on your system but also make sure that it is from a reliable provider. Having a good system can also come with additional features.

And the latter alone will ensure different users have different levels of access to the system, depending on their level on your organization. Besides making everything else easy within your organization, you’ll also stay easy knowing that your data is always secure from hackers. This is very good news, to say the least.

Once again, it is very important for you to think hard about incorporating access management in your business if you haven’t already. Also as mentioned above, having good access management in place will lower your IT expenditure which will, in turn, save your business a ton of money in both the short and the long run.

April 16, 2019
Tidbits from 2018 State of Social Video Report ‘Egypt Edition’

We analyzed over 43,000 videos generating over 7 billion views in 2018. Can you guess what worked and what didn’t in 2018?

The top-performing creators in 2018 were telecom brands and FMCGs, surprisingly followed by non-profit Organizations.

Chipsy, Pepsi and Molto were the top performing brands across main performance indicators within the FMCG sector while Orange, Vodafone topped the telcom battle last year.

Significantly, organizations like the Ministry of Interior have increased their social presence representing 21% of the market share of published videos within that space.

Viewing Behaviors

In 2018, Egyptians’ were most active online in terms of video content during March, May, and June.

The viewership and engagement rates reached top levels in Ramadan when compared with the rest of the year.

As you can recall the 2nd half of Ramadan was gearing towards the World Cup. One would only be assured the same will happen this year with the African Cup of Nations starting 17 days after Ramadan 2019.

Viewing Behaviors – Mintrics

Top Performing Posting Times

The best publishing hours are from 12 pm to 4 pm during weekdays.

Brands and publishers also tend to post videos mostly on Thursdays, Wednesdays, and Sundays.

Top performing posing times – Mintrics

Top Performing Video Lengths

As reported in our State of Social Video Report, long-form videos are less likely to drive viewership but more likely to drive engagement – if done right.

55% of the videos shared were short-form videos (less than a minute), they received a decent 42% of total engagement.

Top performing video lengths – Mintrics

On a slightly unrelated note; did you know that video content including Mo Salah generated 135M views and 2.3M engagements? For more insights like this download 2018 Report!

April 12, 2019