Amr Ashraf: The Technological Foodie

BY REEM TAMO

Egyptian consumers are rapidly turning to online food services, finding them easier and more accurate than dealing with a busy cashier at a food outlet.

However, Amr Ashraf, founder of the food ordering application Engezni, found that there was a misstep when using existing food ordering applications in Egypt.

“There were some applications trying to form the same concept in Egypt and I learned from their mistakes. They were doing it in a way in which it was easier to just pick up the phone and make your order,” said Ashraf.

The idea behind Engezni came about when Ashraf, then a Computer Engineering student at AUC, was asked to come up with a business idea in a software engineering class.

He developed the idea with Hayk Hakobyan, Ahmed El-Shinawy, Nada Beshir and Esmail Ahmed, and together they launched the company in December 2013.

The glitch lied in the fact that with other applications orders go to a middleman who then transfers them to the restaurant. Hence, problems arise in the accuracy of the order as it is passed on to more than one person.

His answer to this problem was Engezni: a food ordering application that has made the process much simpler. With a click of a few buttons, the order goes straight to the restaurants’ ordering screens.

Customers do not have to look for phone numbers and menus as restaurants have their own profiles, which are regularly updated.

One can also share reviews of the experience on Engezni.

Ashraf said: “AUC has been very encouraging when it came to media coverage. The office of communications has been very supportive over the years since we launched. AUC was pushing very hard to make us known, they made us get featured and advertised.”

AUC nominated the Engezni team last February to compete at The Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. The Engezni team did not disappoint and left the competition with second place out of 160 nominees.

MWC is the biggest mobile technology event worldwide.

The founders next want Engezni to be used as extensively as social media applications Facebook and Instagram.

Engezni has proved to be very useful and efficient to users because of its huge directory of restaurants.

“In terms of restaurants, Egypt is very rich. Cairo has more than 20,000 restaurants,” said Ashraf.

Regarding his existing success, Ashraf encouraged students to work on ideas early.

“The advice I would give to AUCians is if someone is thinking about launching their own business, it’s better to start as early as possible. Do not wait until you graduate to start. The earlier you start, the better,” said Ashraf.