Entrepreneurs in Egypt: Engy Samir

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 In News

Young entrepreneurs in Egypt are part of a new wave of self-employment sweeping the nation, and Mostafa Shahat writes about them.


Since entrepreneurship flourished in Egypt after the Arab spring in 2011, employees in companies have started their own initiatives or startups while they are working. The way young people plan for their retirement and the fact that many have their own businesses is totally different from than the old generation, who used to work for long time for a company to save money to be financially stable after retirement.

Sometimes, these startups grow up very fast, especially for those who are working in the tech industry, and instead of being a full-time employee in a company, these founders is run their companies’ operations to sustain and expand it.

The job market has been reformed because of the entrepreneurship, existing industries have been re-developed, and the age group for founders is no longer sixty or seventy. Young people are hiring other young people to work in their businesses, which has never happened before.

Entrepreneurship has also reformed society, which means that even an underprivileged young man or woman could have a brilliant idea that could be incubated and turned to successful company.

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Engy Samir is of the few entrepreneurs who started three businesses successfully while serving as a full-time employee in different companies and taking on managerial positions. Engy studied English Literature at Ain Shams University in 2003, and she is an MBA candidate at Queens bay University, specialising in Studies Education Management: Evaluation & Assessment. Engy is currently working as a Human Resource manager at RTMS (Rail Train Maintenance Service).

Engy also used to provide consultancy services for small and medium companies on how to develop their businesses and manage their manpower effectively to achieve the company’s goals and objectives.

Since 2007, Engy delivered human resources, sales, customer services and marketing analysis trainings to more than 22 companies and 800 employees in Egypt, Qatar, Dubai, Turkey and the UK. Starting from 2010,

Engy also delivered trainings on human resource management, soft skills and career development topics to more than 4,000 students and fresh graduates across NGOs, universities and embassies’ culture centres.

In 2009, Engy started her first social enterprise: an online recruitment agency called D&G online recruitment. It was the first online agency in Egypt at that time.

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Engy helped more than 800 young people find job opportunities and conducted about 250 one-to-one coaching sessions to help individuals define their life’s vision and know their strengths and weaknesses. She also conducted CV writing and interview skills trainings.

In 2014, Engy started her second social enterprise called Purple, which is a platform to connect start ups in different industries so they can help each other with marketing or/and management services. The idea behind Purple is to exchange information and help each other to grow. There are 100 startups currently registered on the platform.

Recently, Engy started her third social enterprise called Cairians, which offers three services: software solutions services, man power management services and translation services. Cairians has four partners locally and internationally who use their services.

‘I have started Cairians with my family members’, says Engy. ‘I believe the three services that we are providing are important for small and medium companies’.


Article submitted by Mostafa Shahat, the volunteer responsible for Arabic guest bloggers in the MENA region and an entrepreneur who has established one of the most successful youth communities in Egypt, Goal Oriented Learners. Mostafa studied social entrepreneurship in USA and is currently the Middle East & North Africa representative at StudySearch (Nigeria) and the Egypt representative for All Events in City (India). Mostafa is also a reporter at Nudge Sustainability Hub. Email him at mshahat@golteam.org and check out his other blog A Syrian’s Success in Egypt and more from his Entrepreneurs in Egypt series.


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