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Tuesday, 8 November 2022

Meet our founder of the week: Hussein Hosny, co-founder and CEO of Carzami

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, finds out about their experiences running a business, and asks for their advice for budding entrepreneurs. Speaking to us this week is Hussein Hosny (LinkedIn), founder and CEO of online used-car retailer Carzami.

My name is Hussein Hosny and I’m the co-founder and CEO of Carzami. I graduated in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in economics and immediately joined my brother, Adham, in a startup. Adham and I have been co-founders and partners in all of the companies we’ve founded since then, the most recent of which was Carzami.

I’ve always been super passionate about cars. I started my career with a startup called Sa3ar, which was a pricing engine for used cars. We observed substantial disparities in the pricing of used cars in the market, so we leaped at the chance to build a pricing engine, which proved to be a huge success.

A year later, we launched Sa3ar Partners, a dealer auction platform that provided a solution to consumers looking to sell their cars. The consumer would list the vehicle, and we would display it for dealers on our auction platform. It was also a success and was fully acquired by Contactcars.com, one of Contact Financial Holding’s companies. Following that, we launched Carzami, which had been our goal since the beginning.

Carzami is an online retailer for used cars and retail financing: We started Carzami with Contact Financial Holding as a partner. It’s an innovative model for buying and selling cars online with digital leadership. All our cars are fully inspected, with a seven-day money back and warranty. Our biggest priorities are transparency when it comes to pricing and the cars’ conditions and overall customer experience. If you want to sell your car, you set up an appointment, we send an inspector, and if everything checks out, we buy the car and you receive the full amount right away. We also provide financing and ins. solutions through Contact Financial Holding.

My family was the primary reason I decided to enter the start-up business immediately after university. Dealing with business has long been a family tradition. You could even say that it is inherited. Adham and I were always motivated, especially because our parents constantly encouraged and supported us in everything we chose to do. As brothers, we’ve always wanted to get into the auto industry.

We entered the automotive sector specifically because we are passionate about cars more than anything else. My father is a car enthusiast, which he also passed along to us. There is a lot of room for improvement in the sector, so we thought we were well suited to tap into the market and its huge potential.

I gave up a lot of things in the process of launching Carzami. You could say I gave up nearly everything related to my social life. But, in my opinion, this is what it takes to start your own business. You’ll need to put in 14 hours per day of pure work and prioritize it over everything else in your life, including socializing and daily hobbies. But I’m quite pleased with the result, and I feel that, while it may be difficult, making these sacrifices will be worth it in the end.

The best part about my job is the cars. The fact that I wake up everyday and work in the automotive industry makes me very happy. Also, realizing the positive energy we are bringing into the industry just fuels me with motivation every day.

The worst aspect of my job is that I am constantly stressed out. Some clients believe that the price we offer is too low because they come to us with a benchmark price that they want to sell at — based on prices on classified websites — which are typically quite expensive and do not reflect the car’s value. Therefore, it can be difficult to persuade the sellers that the market value we are proposing for the car is a fair one.

When Adham and I are unable to solve a problem, we turn to my father, who has extensive knowledge in the sector despite never having worked in it. Also, Hazem Moussa, chairman of Contact Financial Holding, has been an unending source of help for us, and 90% of the challenges we experience are brought to him to find a solution.

Starting your own business is not a lonely journey. It depends on the team but at Carzami we all work together, and there is no such thing as a lone worker.

Our short term goal for Carzami is to start expanding to other countries in the MENA region while in the long-term we want it to become the leading platform for buying and selling used cars not only in Egypt, but in the MENA region. Everything we're doing is geared towards this objective.

I hardly ever have any down time, but when I do, I like to spend it playing golf and hanging out with my family and friends.

I find Carvana to be very inspiring. They have a similar business model to Carzami, so I usually turn to them for inspiration. I am also a fan of their founder and CEO, Ernie Garcia, who’s had a remarkable journey in founding his company.

I believe that the startup scene is rapidly improving. There is an influx of ideas, and they are doing everything they can to better the industry in any manner conceivable — beginning with fintech and moving on to concepts that are unrelated to technology. It makes me very happy to see that younger generations are pushing to perform better and bring fresh ideas to the market.

The one piece of advice I would give to someone starting their own business is to not be afraid and to take the risk. Put all your time and effort into your work, and know that it will all be worth it in the end.

Enterprise is a daily publication of Enterprise Ventures LLC, an Egyptian limited liability company (commercial register 83594), and a subsidiary of Inktank Communications. Summaries are intended for guidance only and are provided on an as-is basis; kindly refer to the source article in its original language prior to undertaking any action. Neither Enterprise Ventures nor its staff assume any responsibility or liability for the accuracy of the information contained in this publication, whether in the form of summaries or analysis. © 2022 Enterprise Ventures LLC.

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