Category: People Moves

Mohamed (Nagaty) Aboulnaga, one of Halan ‘s team of co-founders and its Chief Business Officer announced that today, January 31st, 2021 was his “last working day as an executive/ Chief Business Officer” in the ride-hailing startup.

Nagaty is one of the founding members of the startup along with Mounir Nakla, CEO, and Ahmed Mohsen, CTO. He has announced both are remaining in management.

Halan hails itself as Egypt’s First Super App with 5 million downloads and a whole array of everyday needs offered to consumers and businesses from on-demand ride-hailing and on-demand logistics to peer-to-peer delivery and e-commerce solutions and smart-tech last-mile delivery.

In his brief announcement on LinkedIn, Nagaty said that the decision to leave Halan was “based on a personal interest of starting a new startup.” and that he” will remain a shareholder and will become an advisor to the company going forward.”

Nagaty celebrated the company’s many successes mentioning “100M requests, launching 5 services in 3 countries” and hailing these milestones as  “The first building block in assembling Africa’s Tech-Decacorn.”

Many well wishes to Nagaty and we can’t wait for what is up his sleeve in his exciting new endeavor.

Talabat has appointed Hadeer Shalaby, Careem‘s regional director, as its new Managing Director in Egypt, replacing Sofiène Marzouki, who has been in the interim Managing Director role since January 2020.

With over six years of experience managing Careem Egypt, Shalaby kick-started and led the Ride-Hailing app’s Egyptian market’s growth.

According to Talabat, Shalaby’s priorities include:

1. Drive growth in the Egyptian market
2. Improve customer experience
3. Support restaurant partners and Quick-commerce
4. Work with the government on rider safety and the digital transformation of the food & beverage sector.

Shalaby commented on the appointed “Firstly, I would like to thank Sofiène for successfully steering the organization through the COVID-19 pandemic, rebranding Otlob to Talabat as well as collaborations with the government around the digitization of the F&B sector, and creating employment opportunities for Egyptian youth.”

“These are exciting times for Talabat, and moving forward, I want to continue to focus on growth, particularly with grocery and pharmacy essentials, as well as continue to create an overall seamless experience for our ecosystem – for our customers, riders, government, restaurant partners as well as the communities in which we operate.’”

Talabat launched in Egypt in August 2020 after acquiring Otlob, Egypt’s first and most popular food delivery app.

After six months of announcing Kotobna’s partial acquisition of the online gifting and stationary platform Autograph, the MIT Pan Arab Award-winning startup is now assigning part of its leadership and management to “Mohammad Abdulsalam Idris” as Co-CEO sharing the top executive duties with the main founder and other Co-CEO Mohammad Gamal.

Abdulsalam joined Kotobna three years ago as COO; his main task was to create a scalable, cost-effective, and agile operation model inside the company to provide online and printed publishing services to the growing number of customers (authors and writers) inside and outside Egypt.

During that three years, Abdulsalam succeeded in providing the company with needed infrastructure and partnerships to provide Egyptian and Arab readers with more than 1200 e-books and more than 1000 exclusive new printed titles, the execution publishing cycle of a single book has been reduced to 3 months instead of 1 to 2 years (which is the norm in the traditional publishing industry in Egypt and the Arab world).

Kotobna, which employs a team of 30 professionals, mainly in three functions: Operations & Logistics, Marketing, UX & Customer Relations, and Business Development, is now focusing on expanding its business to the gulf and north Africa, recently launched shipping printed books shipping to all GCC countries, also on diversifying how the traditional book can reach the reader, with focus on e-book experience, and audiobooks production and distribution.

Abdulsalam, an Egyptian author and theater director, graduated from the Faculty of Science, Cairo University, majoring in computer science, worked for more than 8 years in the publishing industry.

He will join Gamal to execute Kotobna’s vision to be the one-stop-shop and literature-agent for all writers and authors across the Arab world, helping them reach readers and monetize from their books and creations.

JLL, one of the world’s leading real estate investment and advisory firms, has appointed Dana Salbak as the Head of Research for the MENA region.

Salbak, who has been at JLL for four years, has been responsible for delivering a number of successful industry-specific publications, in addition to detailed market intelligence. She replaces Craig Plumb, who will continue to work with JLL in an advisory role.

Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated “JLL”, is a leading professional services firm that specializes in real estate and investment management. JLL has an annual revenue of $16.3 billion, operating in over 80 countries and a global workforce of more than 93,000 as of September 30, 2019.

In her new and expanded position, Salbak will work closely with JLL’s team of researchers across MENA to drive synergy and collaboration in the firm’s research output. She will also oversee a team of 10 researchers and data analysts covering the MENA region whilst continuing to drive JLL’s capabilities in data collection, management and analytics, along with strengthening its position as an industry thought leader.

The man behind Nile Radio Productions’ digital transformation, Omar Shoeb, has joined leading Digital Creative Content and Production Agency Kijamii as their Head of Accounts and Creative Content.

The new role comes as part of Kijamii’s latest regional restructure, where Shoeb will spearhead an integrated regional team that combines Account Management and Creatives, to work with the agency’s growing list of high value and blue-chip clients in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

“I’m thrilled to join Kijamii’s ever-expanding vision for growth in Egypt and the MENA region, with a central strategy to deliver quality natively-digital creative content and productions in to Egypt and the MENA region,” Shoeb said.

Elaborating on his role, Omar added: “Marketing leaders are increasingly recognizing the value of quality digital content as a strategic tool that helps deliver new outstanding experiences for their audiences and customers, which in turn helps them meet their business goals efficiently.”

“My role balances between strategic business understanding and creativity. I’ll be focusing on connecting them together to create perfectly aligned solutions. It will be very challenging, and fun,” he said.

In its eight years, Kijamii grew from a simple social media agency to a leading regional digital creative production powerhouse, offering fully-fledged services including Media Buying and Planning, Tech services, and creative productions.

“Since we started operations in 2011, we have experienced exceptional growth as a result of large international and local businesses selecting us as their digital partner. I always joke that when we started, we didn’t have a clear direction as to where we are taking the agency, but we only knew that we need to build great successes with our partners and enjoy something we have always been passionate about,” Kijamii CEO Bassem El-Hady said.

“Today, I would confidently say the vision is clear. Brands have realized the importance of content with the rapid growth of digital solutions, and they are expecting someone who can understand their voice and communicate it on whatever medium in the most agile and efficient way. We’ve built a clear understanding of these needs and adjusted our machine to focus on digital content, campaigns, media solutions and technology. What we are more excited about are the solutions that can get out of marrying those services together,” El-Hady added.

“We believe Omar’s diverse experience in the online/offline media and marketing fields will be central to our next phase, in which we invest more in our content offering to our partners and more importantly the solutions than we get out of creative, tech and media. We strongly believe that agility and efficiency here are the key differentiators to any offering and in Kijamii, we take this very seriously.” El-Hady added.

Shoeb’s dynamic 15-year career spans various media and marketing disciplines including online journalism, television production, writing and directing, digital marketing, digital brand management, digital music distribution, and digital product strategy.

His seven-year digital disruption legacy at NRP includes creating class-leading digital platforms for NRP’s MENA market-leading radio and entertainment brands NogoumFM and NileFM, their music production labels Nogoum Records, NRP Music, their TV station Nogoum FM TV, and their production studios NRP Recording Studios.

Mohamed Omar, the​ thriving media guru with 10 years ​of solid ​experience in Media Partnerships​ across the MENA region has resigned from Twitter, after​ ​a ​three year​s​ term ​as ​Content Partnerships Consultant.

Omar joined Facebook as Strategic Partner Manager, News in MENA.

In his new role, Omar will collaborate with Arabic news organizations to help devise and implement strategic partnership plans, as well as, provide hands-on operational support around Facebook products, tools and services. He Explained

In addition to assisting a broad range of newsrooms to develop innovative social experiences and business solutions on Facebook and Instagram.

In the last three year with Twitter, Omar has successfully built nurturing relationships with a wide range of high-profile performers, public figures, broadcasters, producers, athletes, artists, and news outlets in Egypt, which expanded Twitter‘s footprint in the country.

He was reporting directly to Kinda Ibrahim, Director of Media Partnerships for the Middle East and North Africa.

Previously, Omar played a vital role as FilFan.com‘s key project/product manager, digital managing editor. As he successfully managed to expand the user base of FilFan.com and transform it from a dry news website to the number one interactive online entertainment portal in the Arab world.

Good luck with your future endeavors Omar!

Sofitel Legend Old Cataract and Sofitel Luxor Winter Palace have appointed Mahy Medhat as Marketing Manager, responsible for executing the hotel’s marketing and PR objectives and strategies.

Mahy Medhat holds a Master’s of Art degree in Mass Communications from University of Leicester, she has 10 years of experience in the luxury travel and hospitality industry in the GCC, including UAE, KSA and Qatar.

Mahy’s mission will revolve around creating, building and maintaining the historical hotels brand identity, reputation and communication activities internally and externally.

The Winter Palace is a 5-star luxury hotel built in 1886 by British explorers perched on the Nile River amid luxuriant tropical gardens and ancient temples. The Old Cataract is one of the only five Sofitel Legend hotels in the world, a 19th-century Victorian palace in Aswan.

Jordan-based seed investment company and business accelerator, Oasis500, has appointed Luma Fawaz as the Chief Executive Officer “CEO”, replacing Faisal Hakki who occupied the position since June 2016.

Luma has more than 18 years of extensive experience in investment and financial analysis, she worked for multiple investment companies.

She previously occupied the Head of Investments position at Oasis500 since August 2015.

In a statement by Oasis 500, Ms. Fawaz emphasized on the importance of the upcoming period for paving Oasis500’s path. She also highlighted the importance of enriching Oasis500 through capitalizing on its team’s experience, learnings and efforts over the past eight years, to capture the many opportunities ahead and to continue its journey as a pioneering company in the investment and entrepreneurship sector and a distinctive supporter of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Jordan & MENA.

Lama holds two bachelor degrees in Political Sciences & International Relations from Boston University – United States and a master’s degree with distinction in Finance from the Jordanian Diplomatic Institute.

Anghami, the leading music streaming company in the MENA region, announced the appointment of Paul Akiki as Chief Brand Officer.

With over 18 years of experience in the region in top advertising agencies like BBDO and Leo Burnett, Paul handled regional and international accounts spanning the real-estate, FMCG, telecom, airlines and automotive sectors. Diversely-experienced, Paul brings relevant and functional creativity and the ability to break down language barriers.

In his new role, Paul will be the brand guardian of Anghami, ensuring the brand manifests consistently across the region.

“We are delighted to have Paul on board. His track record in leading creative development for some of the world’s most coveted brands will expand the company’s portfolio and brand across the region. We look forward to the next phase with him.” Eddy Maroun, Co-Founder & CEO of Anghami.

Loving Anghami is easy. Whether from a professional point of view or the user’s. My job, simply put, is to spread this love. We have a great strategic advantage coupled with an amazing offering. Our platform allows us to be very close to our user, his preferences, his music consumption habits. That, along with our repertoire of millions of Arabic and International songs is how we enrich our user’s experience. It is truly a listening experience unlike anything the region has witnessed.” says Paul.

Paul Akiki is an award-winning musician

Paul is no stranger to the music world. An award-winning musician, singer and songwriter, with a rich performance history, he played at the Dubai Jazz Festivals and shared the stage with iconic bands like Aerosmith, Deep Purple and Jamie Cullum.

The global ridesharing app, Uber, appointed Vodafone Group’s regional head of customer value management as its new director of marketing in Egypt.

With over a decade of international experience under his belt, Ahmad Yousry’s career with Vodafone spanned a variety of areas, including consumer and enterprise segment marketing, customer value management, advertising and digital brand management.

While working for Vodafone Egypt he masterminded the Ready Business and loyalty program launches and developed the company’s digital & social media strategies. He also led numerous marketing transformation projects in Europe, Africa and Asia as part of his role in Vodafone Group.

“I’m very excited to join Uber”, said Yousry. “The company is a pioneer in redefining urban mobility and I am looking forward to playing a key role in shaping the future of Uber by creating more unique experiences for riders and providing driver partners with more opportunities for economic empowerment”.

Ahmad studied Electronics and Communication Engineering at the AAST where he also holds an MBA degree.