Denis Opudo
Mumm is a startup that aims at helping women who cook and sell food to take control their business by being passionate about what they do and later on attain financial freedom. The company was started by an Egyptian Waleed Abd El Rahman in October 2015. The company which enrolls both Egyptian and Syrian refugee cooks, educate them on food quality and safety, offer a market for their special food, and help them in giving a fresh hot food to customers in between sixty to ninety minutes. The whole activity revolves around the cooks and is meant to empower them and make them self-reliable.
The achievement within a short period is what encourages the startup as they hope to open up to various countries in Africa. The government recent crackdown on the independent websites and civil liberties, the military pressure in other parts of the country, high rate of terrorist attacks, and unexpected decline in tourism, Egypt’s tech growth remain a promising sector in the country. The presence of a large market of around 100 million people, young innovators and entrepreneurs and low tech experience in the public sector has led to the flourishing of technological development.
Various startups have been created in Egypt since 2011 to serve in different sectors for instance; Bey2ollak that was created to navigate traffic, Yaoota created to digitize death and obituary services, Instanbug created to detect and report bugs amongst other startups. Some of the startups like Wuzzuf and Instanbug have been lucky to be hosted by the Silicon Valley accelerators with offices in San Francisco.
The high development of startups is attributed to the political revolution in the country in 2017 which led to the removal of Hosni Mubarak from power. Although democracy has not been fully realized in the country, there is an urge in the young people to start and operate their businesses.
The GrEEk Campus which was founded in 2013 has also been pivotal in the tech growth by being the first learning institution on the land to offer private and company working spaces to startups. The Campus was founded by Ahmed El Alfi who is the chairman of Sawari Ventures. The GrEEk Campus was founded at a time when it felt so hard to operate a tech campus in the country. Access to finance, poor infrastructures, and lack of technical skills are just but some of the stumbling blocks that the campus went through before getting the right ground for operation.
