PM — A thirty-something man pretended to be a teenage student

Happy hump day and Valentine’s Day, all rolled into one, friends. It’s one of those unexpectedly brisk midweek days here in Omm El Donia as we race towards the weekend.

THE BIG STORY TODAY

Where United Bank, Pachin, and Helwan Fertilizers’ privatization plans currently stand: Two Saudi banks — Tadawul-listed Riyad Bank and Al Rajhi Bank — are reportedly looking to either fully acquire or buy stakes in United Bank as part of the Madbouly government’s plans to sell stakes in 32 companies by the end of 1Q 2024, Al Mal quotes MP Fakhry El Fiky as saying. Meanwhile, Helwan Fertilizers could see as much as 20% of its shares sold to Gulf strategic investors in the privatization push, and bidders who were previously looking to acquire stakes in Pachin are revisiting their positions, Al Mal reported in separate stories (here and here).

THE BIG STORY ABROAD

It’s a mixed bag of nuts in the international business press this afternoon, but another shooting in the US is beginning to make the rounds. A man who appears to have had no connection to Michigan State University killed three people and himself on campus. Five other people were also injured in the shooting. The story is on the front pages of the Wall Street Journal and Reuters.

** CATCH UP QUICK on the top stories from today’s EnterpriseAM:

• The EU doesn’t expect to import more LNG from Egypt this year: Last year’s agreement to boost natural gas exports to the EU from Israel and Egypt will allow Cairo to “keep the relatively high volumes of LNG that it delivered to Europe last year,” EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson said.
• MPs approved bills on tourism, development finance, and fresh oil exploration yesterday, while various committees of the House were busy with everything from carbon trading to a bid to tighten controls on Netflix and other streamers.
• Flat6Labs reached first close on its USD 20 mn Saudi seed fund with the participation of the Saudi Venture Capital Company (SVC) and the Public Investment Fund’s Jada Fund of Funds.

???? CIRCLE YOUR CALENDAR-

Cairo Photo Week is still running through this Saturday, 18 February.

Art Cairo wraps up at the Grand Egyptian Museum today.

The Naguib Mahfouz Festival kicks off tomorrow at Zawya Cinema in downtown.

Find our regular business calendar, which includes a comprehensive listing of upcoming news events and news triggers, in EnterpriseAM and on the web.

⛅ TOMORROW’S WEATHER- Expect another mixed day tomorrow, alternating between sun and clouds. Our favorite weather app tells us the daytime high will reach 17°C before falling to 10°C in the evening.

Global demand for cars is outstripping supply, and automakers want to keep it that way. The average monthly payment for a new car in the US has nearly doubled since 2019, while the price to buy outright has increased by 30%, with the same trend holding when it comes to used cars, reports Bloomberg. Automakers are eager to keep inventory low and prices high to reap the benefits of selling fewer but more expensive vehicles. Last year, nearly 13 mn cars were sold in the US, an 8% drop from 2021, yet Ford saw a 4.4% rise in their y-o-y gross income and General Motors adjusted earnings grew by USD 200 mn. And the automotive crisis is being felt worldwide, including in Europe, Japan and China, where the ability to purchase cars is affected by rising prices, vehicle shortages and a driving push towards more expensive electric vehicles. Here at home, car sales have rapidly fallen on the back of global supply constraints and Egyptian import restrictions.

The global supply chain issues that triggered a shortage of semiconductor chips, crippling car manufacturing, are gradually easing. Margins are expected to ease up in favor of consumers in 2023, and major manufacturers like Ford are anticipating new-car prices to fall by 5% as automakers “dial up” price reductions, says Ford’s CFO John Lawer. Dealers, however, are skeptical that manufacturers will increase inventories. “They all talk about 30 to 45 days’ supply of cars. They won’t do it,” one dealership owner said. “These (semiconductor) chips aren’t a big issue any more. Car wars are back.” As wealthy families secure more cheaper car models or are able to foot the bill of expensive cars, owning a car is likely to become a sign of wealth, Bloomberg notes.

A lack of storage space could spur even more price inflation in the US, CNBC writes. Demand has slowed down because of inflation, causing a pileup of goods at warehouses — and therefore driving up the price of storage. These backend cost increases are more than offsetting the cooling of prices customers were expecting to see on the back of a drop in ocean freight rates and transportation. The warehouse shortage has pushed US storage pricing up 10.6% y-o-y in 2023 so far, CNBC reported, citing WarehouseQuote data. Overflowing warehouses have forced suppliers to store their products in cargo containers used for shipping, which adds another cost that suppliers pass on to their customers, triggering further price hikes and a supply chain bottleneck waiting to happen.

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What happens when a 30+ year-old man pretends to be a teenage student? My Old School is a collection of interviews with the former classmates of a man who, at the age of 32, posed as a high school student for an entire year. Brandon Lee (not his real name) seemed uncharacteristically mature for a 16-year-old when he transferred to Bearsden Academy in Glasgow in 1993, but his classmates were none the wiser that he was nearly twice their age. One of his former classmates, Jono McLeod, directs this documentary which draws on Lee’s own recollection of events. Lee agrees to be interviewed but not to appear on camera, so actor Alan Cumming lip-syncs Lee’s words. Several of Lee’s other classmates are interviewed, frequently in pairs, and it’s quite entertaining watching them try to piece together each other's memories. Videos taken during Lee’s time at the school are, however, the most shocking — particularly footage of him starting in the school performance of South Pacific. Check out the trailer here (watch, runtime: 2:10) or catch the documentary on AppleTV or Hulu.

⚽ The Champions League returns after an unprecedented break: It’s been a long three and a half months since the end of the group stage due to a World Cup break. The Champions League round of 16 kicks off with a bang at 10pm with Paris Saint-Germain v Bayern Munich, and Milan v Tottenham.

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Make Valentine’s Day dinner reservations tonight at Villa Belle Epoque in Maadi or the Nile Kempinski’s Jazz Bar, each of which will have special dinner setups, complete with romantic music to round out the evening. Eish & Malh is also hosting a candlelit dinner with live music.

Or you can skip dinner and get moving: Take a dance class with AfroLatin at Sheraton Cairo in Dokki, with everything from salsa and bachata to kizomba.

Today’s your last chance to catch Art Cairo at the Grand Egyptian Museum. The art fair features more than 30 international galleries from around the Middle East.

“An Archive of Love”: Digitent’s Cairo Photo Week exhibition Middle East Archive continues to run until this Saturday, 18 February at The Hanger in Downtown Cairo. The curated collection of photographs is “a sincere visual exploration and celebration of love in the Middle East and North Africa.” Get tickets to Cairo Photo Week here.

Dust off your dancing shoes for an Afro Jazz Beginners Course with Mako Ruan at the ‎Cairo Contemporary Dance Center from 7-8 pm this Thursday.

Join in on the TriFactory’s Saqqara Pyramid Race this Friday, 17 February. The race is part of their Race Through History series, and you can choose between two distances: 5km and 10km (both are one-lap race courses timed using the MyLaps timing system).

Fun Nation is taking over standup comedy night at Room Art Space New Cairo this Saturday, 18 February at 9pm, with this lineup of local comedians, Waleed Al Tourky, Shehab Al Ashry, Ahmed Hossam, Waleed Mostafa and Waleed Abo Almagd.

Don’t miss Omar Khairat’s concerts at 8pm next Monday and Tuesday, 20 and 21 February in the Main Hall of the Cairo Opera House.

We’re one week away from Kevin Hart’s standup comedy show in Cairo next Tuesday, 21 February. Some ticket categories are still available here.

Bringing the master of silent film to life on stage: Charlie is a musical play about the legendary Charlie Chaplin's human side, his hopes and hardships, and his impact on the film industry. The performance will take place at Theatro Arkan on Friday, 24 February, and tickets can be purchased here.

Catch Cirque du Soleil’s OVO next month: The event features 100 performers taking the stage with their acrobatic acts. OVO will host 16 shows between 8-18 March at Cairo international Stadium Hall, courtesy of real estate developer Madinet Nasr for Housing and Development (pdf).

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A heartbreaking historical novel: The World and All That It Holds, Aleksandar Hemon’s latest novel, is a massive undertaking that took him 12 years to complete. The story is an epic tale of love, war, and displacement set in the first half of the 20th century. It follows Rafael Pinto, a Bosnian-Jewish pharmacist who returns to Sarajevo in 1914 after studying in Vienna, and witnesses the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which sparks WWI. Pinto joins the Austro-Hungarian army, falls in love, survives cholera and the trenches, and ends up in a Russian-run prisoner of war camp in Tashkent. After being liberated in 1919, Pinto enjoys a brief period of romantic bliss before becoming entangled in the chaos of the Bolshevik revolution. The couple eventually splits up, and Pinto sets out as a refugee across mountains and deserts to find a safe haven for himself and his adopted daughter, with only his memories of happier times and the occasional opioid to keep him going.

The EGX30 rose 1.3% at today’s close on turnover of EGP 2.3 bn (21.4% above the 90-day average). Local investors were net buyers. The index is up 19.4% YTD.

In the green: Heliopolis Housing and Development (+8.0%), Juhayna (+7.7%) and Ibnsina Pharma (+5.7%).

In the red: Cleopatra Hospitals Group (-2.1%), Telecom Egypt (-0.8%) and e-finance (-0.8%).

OUR FOUNDER OF THE WEEK– Every Tuesday, Founder of the Week looks at how a successful member of Egypt’s startup community got their big break, asks about their experiences running a business, and gets their advice for budding entrepreneurs. Speaking to us this week is Sophia Korayim (LinkedIn), co-founder and COO of Weelo.

My name is Sophia Korayim, and I’m the co-founder and COO of Weelo, a US-based tech company (with a subsidiary in Egypt) aimed at revolutionizing sales and distribution channels for the supply chain. I have an MBA from Duke University and an undergraduate degree in finance and accounting. I’ve been a director of centers of excellence over the past 15 years in the MENA region.

I started my career as a financial analyst with Merrill Lynch and, as I was working with them, I kind of had a moral intervention and decided I didn’t want to work for the private sector anymore. I wanted to help socioeconomic development, and that’s why I started getting involved in centers of excellence. My last job was with the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce. I was also responsible for a center of innovation and entrepreneurship in the UAE, where I lived for about the last 10 years.

I could see that the supply chain industry was ripe for disruption. The sales and distribution processes, especially in the FMCG industry, are incredibly complex and disjointed. My co-founder and I launched this business because we saw a chance to make an impact. We saw the potential for a technology solution that could streamline and simplify the processes for companies of all sizes.

We built Weelo to level the playing field. Our solution manages multiple sales channels, from warehouse to money collection. Other programs like SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft are incredibly expensive. It isn’t fair when an SME doesn’t have financial access to the technology, just because they can’t afford it as much as big multinationals. Instead, these small players use simple or manual processes to manage their sales and distribution channels. That’s where we identified the problem — and offered an affordable solution that manages sales channels from warehouse to money collection.

What differentiates Weelo in the market is how user-friendly the platform is. The programs built for sales and distribution platforms are usually very complex. As a result, the end users — the salespeople on the field and the marketing teams — are not using the technology to its full potential. We built a very user-friendly UX/UI model that enables anyone — tech-savvy or not — to wield the technology.

That user friendliness is important, because of the tech that’s actually provided. We have a predictive analytics feature in the software that can predict sales for up to 90 days with c.92% accuracy. The platform has a customer stock feature allowing our clients to see what’s on their customers’ shelves and will then use buying behavior patterns to forecast that customer’s future stock orders. It then notifies the sales manager that this customer is going to place an order within an anticipated amount of time with an anticipated amount — so our client knows to send their sales personnel to that customer to make the sale.

Weelo gives users a 360-view of the organization — especially the sales department, which is the bread and butter of any company. We offer a sales and distribution platform that manages multiple sales channels — instead of having to rely on multiple sales channels to be able to sell in the market — in one convenient software with efficiency. It centralizes the process and helps companies overcome inefficient systems. Importantly, Weelo also has a distributor module, which has typically been a black box. Companies like Nivea, Mongini’s, or SC Johnson — all of which are our clients — have distributors that would previously just pay them for whatever they sell. But by using Weelo, they can actually see what’s going on at the distributor.

We closely monitor three KPIs that are critical to our success: Revenue, customer satisfaction, and most importantly, employee satisfaction. These indicators provide us with valuable insight into our business and allow us to identify areas for improvement, both internal and external.

Starting a business is not for the faint of heart. It requires a lot of hard work, sacrifice, and dedication. I gave up the security of a stable job and a steady income to pursue our vision, but I never looked back.

The most rewarding aspect of my job is seeing the impact that our technology has on our clients. It gives me such a sense of pride and fulfillment. I can’t tell you what happens when you see their eyes light up and say, “Oh my God; I can actually afford this tech.” It’s really a game changer. We’ve many case studies of small and medium-sized manufacturers and distributors seeing over 40% increases in sales and 60% reductions in cost as a result of using Weelo.

The only challenging parts are the long hours and the pressure to succeed. Our investors, clients, and followers all expect us to grow and succeed. But the rewards far outweigh the sacrifice.

My advice to anyone thinking of starting their own business is to be true to yourself and your vision. Starting a business is a journey and it’s essential to have a clear understanding of your goals and the steps you need to take to achieve them.

It takes a village to build a successful company. When I’m faced with a difficult problem, I always turn to my business partner, Mohammed Asfour. He has a wealth of knowledge about the tech industry. I also seek advice from our mentors, industry extras, and a lot of trusted colleagues.

I’ve built a very supportive network of colleagues and friends and family who have been there for me every step of the way, so I didn’t find the journey of building a startup to be lonely at all. I’m definitely a people person and I need my network to keep going.

We built this company from scratch and there’s a sense of pride and fulfillment that comes with that. We started by bootstrapping the company, and some notable investors joined us along the way. We were first incubated with Flat6Labs, then our first investment rounds were with SkaleUp Ventures, Integral Capital, AUC Angels, and Expert DoJo in California. We’re currently working on closing our pre-series A round and seeking strategic investors that understand the supply chain and can help us support our regional expansion plans.

We’re launching a new branch in Jeddah in the next month, then hopefully one in Dubai. In the short-term, we want to become the leading provider of sales and distribution technology in our industry. In the long term, we want to transform the way SMEs approach sales and distributions on a global scale.

We’re always looking for the right strategic investor because it’s not just money. Our investors understand our area and scope. We’re very particular with who we drum up investments from.

If I were to exit my company tomorrow, I would do it through a trade sale or a merger with one of our complementary companies like Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, or Oracle. In that case, I’d stay on with senior management or the board of directors to make sure the technology isn’t dismantled or that it’s just our customer base that’s being capitalized on. I would want to continue contributing to the growth and the success of the company.

My family’s been incredibly supportive of my career choice. They’re really proud of what I’ve accomplished and they understand the sacrifices that come with building a business. My daughter is six months old, and I consider her Weelo’s littlest intern. Sometimes when I’m on a Zoom call at home, I let her listen like she’s in training.

The last great thing I read was The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. That’s a book that has really impacted me, especially as an operations person. It’s a really valuable resource for anyone starting a business.

I do a lot of traveling with my family whenever we have those long holiday weeks. A lot of it is Gouna, the North Coast, or travel abroad. I play squash, and when the weather’s nice, I play golf — not during the winter though.

I can’t even imagine not doing Weelo, but if I weren’t, I’d be working on another startup. Entrepreneurship is in my blood. I have a passion for solving conflicts and creating things out of nothing. For now, I’m fully focused on making this company a success, but I do have a few ideas for future businesses that I’d love to pursue. There’s so much that needs to be done in the supply chain field. I’d also definitely love to be a university professor. I’d probably teach entrepreneurship and innovation — that’s kind of my retirement plan.