Corona’s Impact on Entrepreneurship and

Entrepreneurs in the Middle East

Submitted to:
Dr. Ahmed Gamal Elish
Professor of Economics
Helwan University

Submitted by:
Nada Gamal Youssef
Group 5 / English MBA
Bonus Research (2)

Date of Submission: June 11, 2021

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Middle East University Entrepreneurship discusses the impact of the
Corona crisis on future technology trends:
An interactive session was organized by the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship
at the Middle East University, in partnership with the American company Qualcomm,
using the means of remote visual communication, which dealt with the impact of the
Corona crisis on future technology trends and innovation, during which it hosted the
Director of Technology at Qualcomm “Dr. Khaled Al-Maleh.”

The session, which was moderated by the Director of the Center for Innovation and
Entrepreneurship at the Middle East University, Dr. Abdul Rahman Zureik, witnessed the
participation of the Vice President for Scientific Faculties Affairs, Prof. Dr. Alaa Al-Din
Al-Halhouli, and a number of those interested in the technology and entrepreneurship
sector at the Jordanian Ministry of Youth, the University of Science and Technology and
the German University Jordan, in addition to a security incubator for entrepreneurship,
and the Scientific Research and Innovation Fund.

Dr. Khaled Al-Maleh reviewed multiple examples about the information technology
revolution, devices and smart clothes that will appear after the Corona crisis, in advance
of what Apple & Google will accomplish among the smart ways to encourage people to
download applications, tracking and preventing the spread of the Corona virus, and the
ability of smart devices worn by humans, such as wristbands, to detect the virus in the
body, even before symptoms appear on it.

In turn, the Director of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Dr. Abdul
Rahman Zureik, presented a number of new behaviors, which have appeared in our
society since the beginning of the Corona virus crisis, to sweep these ideas through the
barriers of space and time.

The Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Middle East University has been
working, through a series of activities and events, since the start of the Corona crisis, with
the aim of consolidating the idea that the world is now directing its insight on innovation,
information technology and entrepreneurship, believing in the capabilities of innovative
Jordanian youth, who deserve opportunities to launch these innovations. Energies,
including strengthening the partnership between the center and the American
company Qualcomm.

Examples of startups affected by COVID-19

Some startups in Egypt have decided to allow their employees to work from home. Some
companies were negatively affected by the decision to work at home, while others were
not affected by the efficiency or productivity of work.

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With the Egyptian government’s decision to suspend schools and universities for two
weeks after the Corona virus crisis and the emergence of cases in Egypt, some startups
decided to allow their employees to work from home, for fear of them, and to limit the
spread of the virus. This had a negative impact on some companies, while others were not
affected by the efficiency or productivity of work. Wayah contacted a number of
companies to find out the impact of working at home on them and their employees. We
review them in this report:

(1) Wasla

Taken link precautionary measures company, applied the labor policy of the house,
fearing for their employees, and the belief in social responsibility towards them, and
to help reduce the spread of the virus. Said Amr Miller Director of Human Resources in
the link that the company uses tools such as Slack, and zoom, and Jouhl to communicate
on a daily basis, and so far has not affected work remotely on the company 's productivity
or work efficiency.
Wasla was launched in 2018, and is working on a model for spreading free internet in the
Middle East, through an Android browser that provides free connection in exchange for
the user viewing and allowing ads, and it received one million dollars in the first funding
round in 2019.

(2) KarmSolar

KarmSolar has developed a protocol for working from home, after preparing meeting
and remote communication tools, and is also working during that period to equip the
office with more sanitary tools.
Sami Al- Awa, Marketing and Relations Officer at KarmSolar said: “It is a big challenge
for us, as we are learning how to do activities independently or from home, which were
usually done collectively in the office“.
The company uses tools like Google G Suite and the hangouts which facilitates work and
helps to overcome this crisis.
KarmSolar believes that companies need to develop their capabilities to work remotely,
and that employees have the ability to continue working without interruption, in the event
of any emergency circumstances.
The biggest challenge facing the company is developing a plan for the work
of technicians in different locations and stations are their safety priority now.

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KarmSolar was founded by Ahmed Zahran in 2011, and it works in the field of clean
solar energy.

(3) Orcas

Both Omar Fayez and Amira ElGhareeb, Hussam Taher, Ahmed Ismail launched
the company in 2013, and got half a million dollars in the round of pre - initial funding in
2019.
Said Hussam Taher , a founding partner in Orcas " : We encourage teachers to use our
platform online, and team work right to work from home, without discount days holiday“.
We use the company Zoom, Slack and Facebook Workplace to communicate remotely,
but the most common problems are the lack of a stable internet connection, and meetings
without a clear goal and a specific time period.
Offers Orcas education services and babysitting, have allowed their application for free
for students of Egyptian schools, to be able to study online.

(4) Tripdizer

TripDiser helps customers plan their trips, book hotels, flights and various activities, so
now is not the best time for their work, as Ziad El-Adawy pointed out . “ We are
currently only working to support our customers and try to bring them together with the
ones they love“.
In ,9102 the company raised $300,000 in an initial funding round, attracting more than
1,300 clients.

(5) Shaghalny
Khalifa , the work of the founder Shaghalny believes that sales go down when working
from home, it is difficult to work meetings or sale “ . Companies don't hire these days, no
one knows when that period will end“.
Khalifa indicated that the work is being done from the office faster . We don't feel the
team spirit when everyone "works alone" .
Khalifa adds“ :We had a job fair in the first week of April in partnership with Donbosco.
It is one of the largest technical training institutes in Egypt, but it has been postponed due
to the current circumstances“.

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(6) Eldib & Co
Half of El-Deeb’s employees work from home and the other half from the office, as a
result of the closure of courts and other government bodies, as indicated by Muhammad
El-Deeb, adding that the company continues to continue its work normally, and work will
not be done completely from home unless a government decision is issued.

(7) Falak

The accelerator has postponed Falak's start-up demo day scheduled for April. Karima Al
Hakim, Director of Business Development, says “ ,However, the current situation will
allow us and our companies more time to develop our products and our work, and to
consider the details that we may overlook in the middle of our busy day.“.
Al-Hakim adds “ : We are still working with companies, and we organize their meetings
with partners and investors, as they were scheduled to meet with them in the first week of
April ”. Falak will organize events for startups, as soon as they resume their activities.

Travel Tech entrepreneurs in Egypt face the repercussions of Corona

with new offers and innovative plans
The travel and tourism technology sector in most countries around the world has been
greatly affected as a result of the Corona pandemic, which began during the past year and
its repercussions are still clear so far, especially for countries that rely extensively on
tourism as a source of national income, and Egypt is one of those countries that consider
this sector a primary source To obtain revenues and foreign currency, it even
contributes %00.1 of the country's total national income, provides %02.1 of the total hard
currency, and the percentage of workers in the tourism and travel sector is %09.1 of the
total labor force . Several years ago, travel and tourism platforms and applications in
Egypt began to spread, and during that time the situation began to change and many
offers, opportunities and services provided to various customers at home and abroad
developed with it, but the pandemic came and conditions changed from before, especially
with the owners of these applications and platforms, and most of them are considered Of
the young people who are taking their first steps in the world of entrepreneurship, which
prompted some of them to partially stop their activity, and others searched for innovative
solutions, in parallel with creating new strategies, that would give them the opportunity to
get out of this crisis with the least possible losses, but some of them indicated that it is an
opportunity To develop and revitalize the work methods that were followed before, to
allow the introduction of new developments and offers to attract more customers.

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Facing the repercussions
Despite the recent activity of travel and tourism technology in Egypt, it has been able to
prove itself significantly during the past three years in the Egyptian market, as dozens of
applications and platforms appeared during that period that provide various transportation
and travel services remotely, such as flight reservations, hotels, cars and places of
residence, as well as assistance In choosing the areas of trips and safari, as well as
planning and creating a schedule to visit the various tourist areas , however, with the
outbreak of the Corona pandemic during early , 9191 and the precautionary measures and
measures that it imposed and a ban on movement and various flights in Egypt and most
countries of the world, the matter has become a dilemma for a number of those
applications Most of them are young people who do not have enough capital to allow
them to pass that period quietly, but many of them depend on cooperation with
international companies and help in conducting their flights and activities in Egypt in
order to achieve simple profits that enable them to continue and grow, even the founder
of one of these applications has explained There are a number of employees who work
with him who have not received their salaries for nearly several whole months, but after
things improved, they started working again new to what it was before.
The " flash " virtual tour through the Internet Tcefhna during which a number of
platforms and pages of social networking sites for some applications, and found that
some of them have stopped updating their professional activities pages across social
media several months ago, and to speak with one of the workers in one of those
applications confirmed that There are already losses that have occurred to them as a result
of stopping the tourism movement in the first period of the spread of the virus around the
world, and there are already a number of applications that have completed their work and
laid off the worlds with them, but there are also others who preferred to continue until the
beginning of the opening of the atmosphere of travel and movement again, and waiting
for what will The developments of this pandemic result, with the development of their
electronic offers and the reduction of most of the prices of their services to attract more
customers, but during the last few months things have already begun to improve, hoping
to return to the way things were before Corona, which affected the whole world.
And as “ Shehab Ahmed ” founder of the application says ,Visit Guide ,who specializes
in providing travel services and tourism offers “ : Loss of support from the
entrepreneurial community had a significant negative impact, and of course the
suspension of tourism for a long time due to fear of the virus was another reason to affect
our work, but ... the team worked together and volunteered to complete the project
without salary for a period of time 1 .months gave me a push forward, and we did not
stop, but began to focus on attracting domestic tourism, and we took advantage of the
time to develop the system and spread in search engines, and we are working to increase
our application database and platform from flights and hotels, using direct contracts
without an intermediary, as well as our plans to increase our services To provide a full
package for tourism companies such as developing an airline reservation portal and a

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system for booking flights and hotels, in parallel with providing innovative solutions to
tourism companies”.
And about the status of their platform and their application now “ ,Shehab ” says “ : We
started making profits recently by using B2C Model, where we provide flights and hotels
at discounted prices, with the aim of increasing the number of flights and hotels, and then
providing sales channels for tourism companies, as they prefer to have a site bearing their
brand than selling through Marketplace According to the study we conducted during the
Corona crisis.
It is worth noting that a recent report issued by the Egyptian Center for Economic
Studies last November, titled “ Following the Effects of Covid 02- on the Egyptian
Economy ( Tourism Sector ”) indicated that there was a positive rate of change in the
number of tourists at the beginning of , 9191 specifically during the two months January
and February compared to , 9102 which foreshadowed a prosperous year for the tourism
sector in Egypt, but ... With the emergence of Covid , 02- and its spread in Egypt like
other countries of the world, the number of tourists coming to the country decreased until
last August, when the month witnessed the lowest decline Compared to the
corresponding months, the months of April, May and June, then it began to show some
improvement in the months of July and August of.9191
The report also indicated that tourism revenues decreased in the first half ( January-
June ) of 9191 by about 55 % compared to the corresponding period in , 9102 where the
first quarter of the same year witnessed a slight decrease compared to the same quarter of
the previous year, at an estimated rate of , % 00 which is due to the fact that the virus did
not spread in Egypt until mid-March.9191

New trends
And in turn”,Mohamed Ahmed ," founder of the application, continues VISGO ,which
provides audio tours using the Global Positioning System GPS said“ :We launched our
application in ,9191 but unfortunately, after the Corona virus swept the world, and the
travel and tourism industry was affected, so we stopped our work and took a step back to
monitor the situation, but at the present time we do not achieve any revenues, but we also
do not bear heavy losses, And that is by cutting costs by having our four founders
manage most aspects of the business to save costs and keep it going.
And about the changes that the pandemic has brought about in the field of Travel
Tech“ Mohammed ”explained“ :We have recently found that the Corona virus has
changed customer behavior, and new trends have emerged such as touchless travel, social
destination, virtual travel, and a decrease in the number of group travel lovers, which will
force some old companies to change or go down”.
On their plans to get out of this predicament, he added“ :We are developing our activities
by conducting interviews with clients and experts, as we have been able to create better
versions of both our website and application, adding new languages and features that

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were not available before, and we are also creating content Sophisticated for uploading
developers' audio guides to the site, allowing them to generate income with every
purchase of their audio guide”.
It is noteworthy that the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies has predicted
the emergence of signs of recovery from the effects of such a pandemic during the middle
of this year, as it is likely the arrival of some 9.9 million tourists to Egypt, with the tourist
revenue by about 36 1 million dollars, to increase those revenues to reach for
almost 211 $ million through the end of , 9190 but with a return to 9102 levels only
before ,1 919 at the same time 4 919 is likely to represent a huge boom for the tourism
sector in Egypt, as the Corona vaccine will have been used for about Three years, and
thus the emergence of its positive results, and the ability to control the virus, which
indicates the recovery of the economy, and the return of incomes to their usual levels to a
large extent
Haitham Abu Atta ", the founder of the application of " passengers " to offer tourism
and aviation , complete talk , saying " : hurt our work dramatically, and caused us to the
pandemic in the occurrence of some losses . At the beginning of 9191 and before
the spread of the virus was beyond the number of the next daily bookings from
the application and location 01 Reservations, but after the flight stopped, the number did
not exceed 01 reservations per month, and in some months there were no reservations at
all .. But we did not give up or stop in the face of those repercussions that struck the
whole world .Rather, we increased advertising campaigns ,and focused on countries that
did not. There is a closure of flights or hotels, and it allows the reception of tourists, and
the promotion of tourism and domestic flights will be relied upon, with major local and
international companies”.
The travel and tourism technology industry continues to develop, so that it did not stop
much even after the outbreak of the pandemic, but only changed its compass to coexist in
an innovative way with new developments. Do not forget that experts at the “ Arab
Travel Market ” exhibition that was held in Dubai during - 9102 before Corona
outbreak - that the application of technology in the tourism and transportation industry
will contribute to achieving huge savings amounting to 11 billion dollars during the next
fifteen years, and that the future will be open to artificial intelligence and the Internet of
Things applications to play a greater role during the coming period in providing various
travel and tourism services around the world.

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