Google to expand its Cairo office
INVESTMENT WATCH- Google is planning to start hiring a full team for its Cairo office, the Investment Ministry said in a statement yesterday. Google’s MENA Managing Director Lino Cattaruzzi told Enterprise in an interview that the hiring push, which will include tapping a new country manager, will begin soon. A Google spokesperson separately told us that Hesham Elnazer (LinkedIn), currently Google’s director of agencies for MENA and 15-year veteran of Mars, is set to fill the country manager position.
The hiring is the harbinger of more to come: “That’s the initial stone and then we are going to grow this over time based on the results and the impact we have,” Cattaruzzi told Enterprise. “We are trying to accelerate the work on the quality of our products and engagement with our partners on the content creation side and ecosystem and how to develop all these businesses so they can sell more online inside and outside Egypt.”
Google is also set to release soon its Egypt economic impact report, at which Enterprise got an exclusive first look. Among the statistics included in the report:
- Google products support at least EGP 5.2 bn-worth of economic activity in Egypt;
- Google plans to reach 100k people through its pro-bono digital training program “Maharat min Google” by the end of 2019, which will help nearly 25k people find new jobs or grow in their current ones;
- Google aims to get 200k businesses on Google My Business by the end of 2019 and will launch AdWords Express later this year.