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Good afternoon friends, and welcome to the tail-end of this busy hump day. Picking up where we left off this morning, it’s a brisk news day here at home as macroeconomics and fiscal policy continue to take the lead.

THE BIG STORIES TODAY-

#1- Inflation hits new high on weaker EGP: Inflation rose to a fresh five-year high in December as the impact of successive currency devaluations continued to feed through to the economy. Figures from state statistics agency Capmas showed the urban annual rate of inflation jumped to 21.3% in December, up from 18.7% the month before, driven by surging food costs. This is the highest rate since December 2017, and is up from just 5.9% in December 2021.

#2– Our first look at the tax policy document: Finance Minister Mohamed Maait gave us our first snippet into the highly-anticipated five-year tax policy document during a presser earlier today. The document will not affect the current corporate income tax, which Maait vowed will remain unchanged for as long as he is finance minister, but capital gains tax and income tax amendments are on the table. President Abdel Fattah El Sisi will unveil the document in a few weeks’ time.

THE BIG STORY ABROAD

Now that the US House of Representatives has a speaker and riots in Brazil have simmered down, the international business press is back to giving us a mixed bag of nuts this afternoon. Among the headlines out there:

• Amazon is planning to close down three warehouses in the UK. (The Financial Times)
• The Biden administration has a new proposal that could wipe out student loan debt more quickly. (The Wall Street Journal)
• Dubai’s property market staged a major rebound in 2022 to hit record home sales. (Bloomberg)
• Russia is hammering down on Soledar, a small salt mining town in eastern Ukraine. (Reuters)

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

• Cabinet announces budget cutbacks amid rising inflation, FX crunch: Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly has told all but “essential” ministries to make budget cutbacks until the end of the current fiscal year.
• Compass cleared for DD on Pachin + Speed Medical, ICMI look at M&A transactions: Compass Capital got the green light to do due diligence on Pachin, Egypt’s most sought-after paints company, Speed Medical is considering selling its stake in Speed Hospital in Obour, and ICMI is looking at a number of acquisitions in the textiles and medical sectors.
• GB Auto subsidiary GB Lease closed an EGP 1.7 bn three-tranche securitized bond issuance, backed by a receivables portfolio of EGP 2.4 bn.

???? CIRCLE YOUR CALENDAR-

CIT Minister Amr Talaat is heading a delegation to India to drum up investment by Indian companies in our CIT sector, according to a ministry statement. On the first day of a weeklong visit, Talaat met members of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), where he showcased investment possibilities in digital transformation, data centers, outsourcing, and entrepreneurship. Talaat also held a meeting with Ranjeet Goswami, global head of corporate affairs at Mumbai-based multinational IT firm Tata Consultancy Services.

The national dialogue will kick off on Saturday, 14 January.

Davos 2023: The usual suspects will descend on the Swiss town for the annual meetings of the World Economic Forum on 16-20 January.

Check out our full calendar on the web for a comprehensive listing of upcoming news events, national holidays and news triggers.

????️ TOMORROW’S WEATHER- A few rays of sunshine could peek through, but we’re looking at an overall mostly cloudy day tomorrow with a daytime high of 19°C and a nighttime low of 11°C, according to our favorite weather app.

ENTERPRISE IS LOOKING FOR SMART, TALENTED PEOPLE of all backgrounds to help us build some very cool new things. Enterprise — the essential daily read on what’s happening in business, finance, economics and policy in Egypt and the wider region — is looking for writers, reporters, and editors to help us build new publications. We’re looking for gifted story-tellers from all walks of life and across all professions, as long as they show a keen interest in learning to write about the stories, topics, businesses, and ideas moving markets. Egyptian and foreign nationals alike are welcome to apply.

NEVER WORKED IN A NEWSROOM BEFORE? We have the Enterprise Business Writing Development Program. The four-month program will see full-time, paid participants take part in workshops and lectures from veteran business journalists, while also working on and filing stories that will run in our publications. Those who successfully complete the program will then be offered full-time positions on staff.

During the program you will learn:

• The key news stories and trends shaping business and the economy in Egypt and the region, across various sectors;
• Business and finance for non-finance people: Whether it’s industry jargon, key concepts, or simply how to read a an income statement;
• How to construct an Enterprise story: From idea formulation down to the structure, style, and tone of writing;
• The ins and outs of a newsroom, including how to develop sources that will give you the key insights needed to tell a complete story;
• How to communicate these stories with the confidence and language of an insider.

Apply directly to jobs@enterprisemea.com and mention “writing development program” in your subject line.

Microsoft’s new AI, VALL-E can mimic your voice and tone — all it needs is just a three-second audio sample. Last week, Microsoft researchers announced VALL-E, a new text-to-speech AI model that can imitate a person’s voice when given a three-second audio sample, Ars Technica reports. Once it learns a person’s voice, it can continue to generate audio of that person saying anything — while attempting to retain the speaker's emotional tone. VALL-E can potentially be used for audio content creation if paired with other AI models like GPT-3 and for text-to-speech applications, wherein a person’s recording may be altered, by modifying the written transcript, to make them say something they did not actually say.

The software giant is mulling big moves in the AI space: Microsoft is considering making a USD 10 bn investment in OpenAI, creator of the popular artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, Bloomberg reports, citing unnamed sources familiar with the company’s plans. The agreement being considered would entail Microsoft investing the money over several years, but the final terms are subject to change.The funding, which will include other VCs, would value OpenAI at USD 29 bn, including Microsoft’s investment, Semafor reports. Although it is unclear whether a final agreement has been reached, documents recently distributed to prospective investors explaining its terms had signaled the agreement was targeting a closing date at the end of 2022. The company, which previously invested around USD 1 bn in OpenAI, is currently working on adding ChatGPT to its Bing search engine, Reuters reported.

You can now have your shot at a second life for just EUR 50 a month: An emerging field known as cryogenics, where human bodies are preserved after their death in hopes of future scientific and medical treatments helping to resurrect them decades after, is gaining ground despite doctors’ and scientists’ reservations. Bodies of people whose lives were cut short by a disease are transported to “suspension facilities,” where medical teams replace blood with a chemical mixture that prevents them from freezing when they are stored in -196°C liquid nitrogen, Parmy Olson writes for Bloomberg.

The goal is then for future medical teams to find the cures of the disease that ailed their bodies and use them to treat and resurrect them. Some 500 people, mostly in the US, have now been put in cryogenic stasis after their legal death, with thousands on waitlists. All they need to do is pay a roughly EUR 50 subscription fee to the cryogenics firm and for a life ins. policy, which, instead of going to the deceased’s family, will instead go to the company to fund their work, cryonics business Tomorrow Biostasis tells Olson.

Unsurprisingly, there are countless caveats: The glorified mummification technique is — as it stands — based more on wishful thinking and faith in the evolution of science rather than actual scientific evidence. Scientists would need to discover a way to reverse death, as well as learn more about how brains — which are very complex and delicate organs — would be impacted by the decades-long freeze, Olson writes. Despite the fact that the field has been labeled a form of pseudoscience and “quackery” by some doctors, Olson argues that there is merit to the field, especially since some scientific feats that were previously unimaginable — think nine-hour-late CPR — have somehow become a reality.

???? ON THE TUBE TONIGHT-
(all times CLT)

Season 2 of Ginny and Georgia is out on Netflix, with some dark drama in tow. The show, which first aired around a year ago, hits on the dynamics of the relationship between a young single mother, Georgia Miller, and her teenage daughter, Ginny, and young son, Austin. Georgia, who would do anything to protect her children, did some unjustifiable things in her past — including murder. The new season reveals more of Georgia’s intentions behind each murder, and sheds light on Ginny’s journey with therapy as a teenager and her various unhealthy coping mechanisms for having a mother whom she sometimes feels more mature than. While trying to relate to her mother’s perspective in life, Ginny finds that she is just like her in some ways, and attempts to find sympathy in Georgina’s horrific actions.

⚽ Two matches in the Carabao Cup quarter final tonight: Manchester United will host Charlton Athletic at 10pm, at the same time as the Newcastle and Leicester City match.

Coppa Italia round of 16: Inter Milan will face Parma in the final round at 10pm.

Gulf 25: The competition intensified in the first group of the Arab Gulf Cup after the defeat of Saudi Arabia yesterday against host country Iraq, and Oman’s victory over Yemen. Now, Iraq is tied with Oman at four points each, while Saudi has three points, and Yemen is last with zero points.

Other matches happening today:

Qatar v Bahrain (6:15pm)

UAE v Kuwait (3:15pm)

???? OUT AND ABOUT-
(all times CLT)

Hassan Abou Alam & Ismael will take the stage tonight at Cairo Jazz Club in Agouza 9pm playing some of the best high-paced techno beats.

Grab a mic and put your talents on display at Karaoke Night at Room Garden City at 8pm.

Room New Cairo is hosting Taht El Sefr: Space Launch band performing some Indie rock music tonight at 9pm.

???? UNDER THE LAMPLIGHT-

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: This fantasy novel written by American author V.E. Schwab follows a young French woman in 1714, who makes a bargain with the devil to live forever — but ends up with a parallel curse that makes anyone she meets forget her at the stroke of midnight. The curse is a form of punishment by God of the Night Luc — whom she refuses to give her soul to every night. Despite living unremembered by everyone, Addie leaves a mark on the creative world with her great aesthetics and composing songs. Everything changes for Addie when, after 300 years of being forgotten by everyone, a man named Henry mysteriously remembers her the next day.

The EGX30 fell 3.9% at today’s close on turnover of EGP 2.4 bn (48.7% above the 90-day average). Local investors were net buyers. The index is up 5.9% YTD.

In the green: Heliopolis Housing (+2.4%), Housing and Development Bank (+0.5%).

In the red: Palm Hills Development (-6.6%), EFG Hermes (-6.4%) and CIB (-6.2%).

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 Mohamed Azab (LinkedIn), co-founder of healthcare company Seha Healthcare and pharma platform Grinta.

My name is Mohamed Azab, and I am a business owner and founder. I sold my first business, Hassab Labs, in 2015. It grew out of Alexandria to become a top lab firm in the country before expanding into Morocco, where it was acquired by a large Moroccan group.

I subsequently co-founded my second venture, Seha Healthcare, a healthcare platform designed for the middle-income segment. We invest in hospitals and polyclinics.

Our latest startup, Grinta, is a B2B e-commerce platform that connects pharma manufacturers with independent pharmacies in Egypt. The goal is to make meds accessible across Africa. Over the next two to three years, we intend to grow into Morocco, Nigeria, and Kenya.

I have always been an entrepreneur at heart. I prefer to build things, rather than being a part of the wheel, and I look to introduce concepts that will really impact the market. This is why I chose to delve into the healthcare sector despite having studied finance.

Grinta is trying to solve the issue of pharma access in Africa. Further south, you’ll find counterfeit meds, a severe lack of infrastructure, and very limited access to medical care. We are attempting to digitize that last mile of the pharma value chain across the continent.

The best part of my job is having a purpose. I believe that having a mission and a purpose are crucial. I also enjoy the ability to reinvent myself while running different businesses — a hospital, for instance, is a brick-and-mortar business heavy on assets, whereas Grinta is all about super fast growth.

There is no worst part of my job, but one of the biggest challenges at Grinta was raising our seed round during the pandemic, when global markets weren’t doing great and people had stopped investing.

Seha Healthcare has raised roughly USD 20 mn in the last five years, and Grinta has raised USD 9.5 mn since its inception last year. We aim to raise USD 20 mn or more for Grinta in the future. So far, Grinta’s investors include Raed Ventures, Nclude, and Endeavor Catalyst, as well as some Asian angel investors.

The KPIs that I look at change with time. We were focused on expansion at Grinta five to six months ago, but now we’re more concerned with growing steadily. There’s this great quote: “With chaos comes revenue, and with discipline comes profitability.” This explains the arc of our business.

Being a founder of a startup is a lonely journey if you are a solo founder. In my situation, I’m far from lonely because I have partners and we go through the journey together.

Grinta is a long-term play — I don’t see myself exiting in the next five to seven years, but it would be a success to have an IPO outside of Egypt.

I always listen to the Masters of Scale podcast with Reed Hoffman. I also recently watched The Mechanism, a Netflix drama about Brazilian politics. The resemblance between Latin America and our region is shocking. I’m also into reading Sufi books. It’s spiritual and gives me a good balance in life.

I consider myself extremely lucky to be part of the Endeavor entrepreneurs network. I’ve been a member since 2012 and have served on Endeavor Egypt’s board since 2016. It provides a great amount of inspiration. I’m especially fond of the Careem founders, Mudassir Sheikha (LinkedIn) and Abdullah Elyas (LinkedIn). The way they grew their business throughout the region, from Pakistan to Morocco, is very impressive.

I choose my team based on the 3 Vs: Vision, values, and value added. I am also a big believer in women’s empowerment, so I try to reflect this in my companies as much as possible. I would love to see more women co-founders — like our CTO, Yosra Badr (LinkedIn) — in tech going forward.

Mentoring is important to me. My co-founders and I are committed to assisting other entrepreneurs and investing in new startups. It’s always encouraging to watch the startup scene thrive.