STARTUP WATCH- Six tech startups to join CIT Ministry’s TIEC Incubator: The CIT Ministry’s Technology Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center (TIEC) selected six tech startups that won the 21st round of its startup competition Start IT to join it incubator, TIEC said in a statement. Those tapped include garment industry-focused IoT platform Garment IO, cloud POS platform El Zatona, recycled fashion app Green Fashion, and dating app Harmonica.

Egypt was the fastest growing “ecosystem” of 2018 with 22% of all transactions in the region, up 7% from 2017, according to MAGNiTT’s annual 2018 MENA Venture Investment Report. Having said that, we would be remiss if we did not point out the challenges in growing market.

Sometimes, startups fail,as MENA Bytes reminds us in its interview with Mahmoud Abdel-Fattah, the founder of now shuttered Egypt-based price comparison website Bkam. Abdel-Fattah discusses why his app, which was downloaded over 50,000 times, failed and what lessons he learned. Primary reason for failure: Got too bogged down satisfying a non-committed investor. Biggest lessons learned: Don’t go at it alone and find a co-founder, keep fundraising, and spend on growth.