Ashraf Sabry, founder and CEO of Fawry: With a background in sales at IBM and having played a crucial role in Raya Holding’s enormous growth during the early 2000s, Sabry left behind corporate life with the idea for e-payments platform Fawry in 2008. What makes his story special is that the transition took place a little later in his career than most entrepreneurs and during a time that looked very different than today’s startup landscape. With a lack of ambitious VCs or startup accelerators, Sabry relied on large institutional investors to support Fawry in its early days. The e-payments platform has since connected over 29 mn customers through 166K service points across the country, and can be used for services ranging from utility bills and school tuition, to traffic fines and insurance.

You can check out our interview with Ashraf Sabry on our podcast Making It here (Listen, runtime 42:16)