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, asks about their experiences running a business, and gets their advice for budding entrepreneurs. Speaking to us this week is Himanshu Shrimali (LinkedIn), cofounder and CEO of Menthum.

My name is Himanshu Shrimali, and I’m the cofounder and CEO of Menthum, a digital saving proposition in its current form, which makes your money work harder for you. Eventually, we want to be a fresh way to make money.

Menthum is Egypt’s first digital money market fund. We are licensed and regulated by the Financial Regulatory Authority of Egypt, and launched in partnership with a leading investment manager. We want to make ourselves the go-to place to smartly and securely save money, after which we want to offer a payment tool and then empower other players to provide embedded finance.

I’ve been working in the banking and financial services sector for over two decades across different regions. I’ve been in Egypt for almost 13 years now, of which I spent nine years at the Arab African International Bank, with my last position being head of retail banking.

During my journey, I discovered that current and savings accounts were the most profitable products. This is the case across most Egyptian banks, as the net interest margins on these accounts are very high. About 60-70% of banking assets are invested in treasury bills, with the rest going to the private sector. This gave me the idea that you don’t have to be a bank to deliver proper customer value in this context, and that is how Menthum was born.

At heart, I’m an entrepreneur. Before joining the banking industry, I built my first venture during the dotcom-era in the early 2000s, where I established a financial planner library and sold it off to a company. My keenness on making an impact in an accelerated manner was the main motivation for me to leave the banking industry and go into the entrepreneurship world. The best part of my job is creating new things and making a positive difference in a customer’s life. This is what gives me a kick in life.

I’m a believer in the Japanese concept of Kaizen, which means “continuous improvement through baby steps.” Big ideas are good, but implementation takes one step at a time, so I like making incremental changes. I’ve learned that smaller setups allow me to have a much bigger impact than large ones.

The most challenging part of my job is the effort it takes to make people understand what you’re saying and doing. Generally, people are very bound to norms and steering them away from these norms can be very difficult. So, as an individual changemaker, it can become challenging to make people understand the big picture or a logical way of doing things. That plays into multiple areas, like establishing partnerships with other players or hiring a team.

A lot of people say to put yourself in your customer’s shoes, but I believe as an entrepreneur, you need to be the customer first. Don’t think on another person’s behalf. Rather, look at your own needs and fulfill them. Unless you feel a need for something intensely, you will not be able to build a robust enough product to fulfill other people’s needs.

The two most important KPIs I look at everyday are the number of customers and assets under management. Since we don’t run any marketing campaigns, when more and more strangers give Menthum a try, it makes me happy.

When I’m facing a challenge, I mainly turn to my business partner, my wife, and my sons. I’ve known my cofounder Ismail Sarhank for only three years now, but our value system in life is very similar, which is why I love going to him with challenges. My other three advisors are my wife, who has been a management and marketing professional for many years, and my two sons, both of whom are in high school. They know more things than me because they look at the world very differently, which is why I especially like to bounce new product ideas off my sons.

My children think what I do is very cool because it is very different from what most parents of their classmates do. My wife has a bit of anxiety around the stability and security of my career choice, but she’s ok.

Tipping Point and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell are two of my favorite books. I’m re-reading Outliers at the moment, because it is such a great book.

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