The coronavirus pandemic will forever mark a new pattern of events for most startups across Africa. Should an event as worst as the coronavirus pandemic occur again in the future, most startups across Africa would know just how well to confront it. This is what RiseUp, one of Egypt’s biggest startup events, has revealed during its recently held first ever virtual edition entitled ‘Got Grit?’ The event which attracted thousands of participants, gave visitors a glimpse into the Egyptian startup ecosystem.
“In our virtual Startup Expo, exhibitors customised their own virtual booths and interacted directly with potential clients and investors, while Startup Office Hours allowed participants to book consultancy sessions with industry experts, and Networking Circles gave people the opportunity to meet and interact, sharing ideas and resources on how to overcome current business challenges,” said Abdelhameed Sharara, the founder and CEO of RiseUp.
Here Is What You Need To Know
- Hosted last weekend, RiseUp From Home attracted over 2000 attendees representing 30 nationalities, including 269 startups, 47 investors, and 105 speakers. Topics covered focused on Covid-19, exploring ways in which startups can develop entrepreneurial resilience during turbulent times and how to prepare for similar threats in the future.
- The virtual event featured four tracks: smart capital, emerging tech, creative culture, tech for humans and people.
“At the time of crisis, disruption brings advancement in the same manner that challenge is being produced,” said Sherif Kamel, Dean of the school of business at the American University in Cairo (AUC). “For the next generation, innovative entrepreneurs are focused on tech-enabled and tech-driven startups that can provide future-proof solutions to help sectors such as transportation, fintechs, healthcare, logistics, education, retailing, agriculture, manufacturing during challenging times. The sky is their limit.”
- This year’s edition proved that online conferences can be successful, with attendees being able to juggle between different sessions, panels and workshops at the same time.
Lessons From The Event
Lockdowns Led To Increase In Online Payment Options
According to Kamel, lockdowns, necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic, compelled more businesses to move online across the region. This correspondingly led to an increase in the need for online payment options.
“In a region like ours with massive informal economies, there’s an opportune moment for financial inclusion. Taking Egypt as an Egypt, where only 14 per cent only of the adult population is banking money,” he said.
Kamel called on entrepreneurs to exploit the thriving financial technology (fintech) ecosystem in the Middle East and North Africa region (Mena), stating that fintech enablers play a crucial role in promoting and achieving financial inclusion.
Lockdowns Led To Increase In Traffic For Online-based Businesses
According to Omar Gabr, founder of Instabug, the pandemic positively touched the way Instabug, which provides bug and crash reports, does its business.
“People staying home has increased traffic on our app to almost 80 per cent since March, through applications like Houseparty, Instacart, and 9Gag.” Gabr said. “We recently raised $5 million in May from Accel and Y Combinator.”
For edtech startups like Amman-based Abwab and Dubai-based el-mentor, there was unprecedented uptick in user activity as education moved to the internet.
“Within the past 6 months, the number of courses attended on our platform doubled,” said Hatem Sallam, partner and chief growth officer at almentor.net. “where 42,000 professional development online courses were attended by users, and 500,000 online courses were attended by secondary school students, where they were able to study and prepare for their final exams from the comfort of their home. This was in collaboration with the Ministry of Education in Egypt and sponsored by the National Bank of Egypt.”
The news is also the same for Mahmoud Ibraim, CEO of Cairo-based furniture marketplace Homzmart, who said that from January to July 2020, Homzmart witnessed a 30x increase in monthly average number of users, and 13x growth in sales.
Lockdowns Led To Partnerships And Pivotals
For Taker, a Saudi Arabia-based software as a service (SaaS) startup that provides an online ordering management platform for restaurants, the pandemic presented an unexpected opportunity for food delivery aggregators to obtain a pivotal position in the F&B sector in Saudi Arabia.
“During the lockdown period in Saudi Arabia, we were approached by restaurants looking for professional ordering channels like ours. We saw almost a 500 per cent increase in the number of orders placed through our platform overnight, which was not really expected. Now after the curfew was lifted, the number of orders placed online still is much higher than it was before the pandemic,” said Abdullah ElSaadi, CEO of Taker.
Lockdowns Led To Bitter Losses For Ride-Hailing Startups
In as much as most startups counted their gains, there were also others who were not so lucky. From business loss to difficulties in fundraising to continuing erosion of their markets, Ibrahim Manaa, managing director of global markets at Dubai-based Careem, for instance, said that the company decided to double down on delivery space and e-payment services through its recently-launched super app to make up the ground lost in the ride-hailing space, which had seen an 80 per cent decline in revenues during lockdown.
“We were working on launching the super app prior to Covid-19. What happened was that Covid-19 actually accelerated the process of developing and launching it.”
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning writer