📱 OUR FOUNDER OF THE WEEK — Every Tuesday, Founder of the Week looks at how a successful member of Egypt’s business or startup community got their big break, asks about their experiences running a company, and gets their advice for budding entrepreneurs. Speaking to us this week is Ahmad Atef (LinkedIn), co-founder and CEO of Egyptian e-commerce platform Kenzz.

My name is Ahmad Atef, I’m the co-founder and CEO of Kenzz, an Egyptian e-commerce platform built to bring a simple, relevant, and rewarding online shopping experience to the mass majority of Egyptians. I’m originally an engineer, and I graduated from Ain Shams University. I started my career off as a VAS quality engineer at Vodafone given my engineering background, but I was dying to move to the commercial department. I soon moved on to CVM — customer value management — where I was building customized offers for consumers based on their usage and behavior.

On the back of this success, I was offered to move to Romania. In Vodafone Romania, it was completely different. It wasn't about minutes and megabytes — it was about selling phones. This is where I was able to gain experience in e-commerce. The market in Romania was very similar to Egypt, and that is where the idea behind Kenzz began to bubble up. I realized there was great potential for e-commerce in Egypt and the Middle East, but it wasn’t being tapped, as everyone was following the conventional e-commerce model.

In Egypt, everyone has access to the internet, but when you look at e-commerce, it pales in comparison to the offline market. There are two ways to buy online: one of them is reliable e-commerce that gives you a proper experience, good product selection, and so on. You hear global names, but it's alienating the majority of the population. It's centralized in Cairo, Giza, and the big cities. The second way is through social media, which is more relevant to the masses and illustrates that you can buy something and get it delivered. But it's unreliable, scattered, and fragmented.

We wanted to build a local and entirely Egyptian e-commerce platform that catered to the masses. Kenzz is built to resemble social media shopping — it’s browsing-centric, features a TikTok-style video shopping experience, and only requires users to sign up with their phone number. Some 60-70% of Kenzz’s users come from outside the big cities.

Our journey has been a rollercoaster thus far. One of the times I felt that we were successful is when we were hosting a focus group, and we came to find out that three out of five users’ first-ever online purchases were through Kenzz. This is when we knew we were building what we envisioned. In five years, I see Kenzz being a household name. We see it as part of Egyptians’ social media rotation. It’s not just about shopping — we’re keen on having people opening the app every day, looking up different products, and browsing through the offers.

When we started Kenzz in 2022, there were quite a few challenges. During those early days, what really helped was the team we’d built and the strength of our vision. When faced with economic challenges, we quickly realized that they were actually in our favor. Kenzz is all about good prices, and we saw a lot of customers directing to Kenzz from other platforms to find them. It’s definitely still challenging, but sometimes things end up in your favor.

It’s all about building trust. In Egypt, most consumers are what I would call late-early adopters. They’re aware online shopping exists, but the hindrance to their usage is usually trust, confirming the website is legitimate, believing that you’ll receive support in case of any hiccups, and trusting that the product shown is what’s received in a timely, reliable manner. To address this, we launched Kenzz TV — a video shopping experience where customers can see the products in action. We also encourage user-generated content instead of traditional reviews, which we then feature on our products page.

I’d like to see more trust throughout the industry in general. Lack of trust is a common initial phase, even in countries where the market has since matured. As the years passed, people started trusting the process, putting their cards online, and paying digitally. I see Egypt heading in this direction, but one of the roles we see Kenzz playing now is accelerating this transition so that it happens sooner. We don't have to wait 10 or 20 years for Egypt's e-commerce market to mature. So, accelerating that sentiment and trust is a key point.

Another, more complex issue is the prevailing sentiment that e-commerce is a cashburning business. People in offline markets buy and sell, make good earnings, and consumers still get good value. This took some time to achieve in e-commerce, but I think it's also changing. The goal here is to reach sufficient scale with reliable service, which allows you to start realizing the benefits of efficiencies in areas like logistics.

The most rewarding aspect of my job is knowing that people depend on what you do — whether suppliers, consumers, or colleagues. Making a real, evident impact is what matters. On the other hand, the most difficult part is never being able to switch off. It’s not about working a lot, it’s about having running thoughts about the people, the next big challenges, the revenues, and all that. You never get to switch off and you bring things home.

Balancing work and personal life is hard, and I think I got very lucky with my family being very understanding and even very passionate about what I do — it was actually my wife that came up with the name Kenzz. But it’s not just about switching off, it’s about finding peace and knowing when you need to stay focused, and when you can take some time for yourself.

One book that I’ve read multiple times is The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. It’s a brutally honest book about entrepreneurship. Every time I've read it I’ve done so from a different perspective as I find myself in a different part of my journey. It’s not this flashy, romantic view on startups — it’s about all the suffering and struggles. You get to understand that this is normal.

If I hadn’t founded Kenzz, I’d still be out there building something. That is where my passion lies and I lose track of time. If it hadn’t been e-commerce, it would have been fintech. If I could go back in time, I’d tell my younger self to go easy on myself. As time passes by, you understand that it’s okay to make mistakes, it’s okay when you can’t figure it out — that’s part of the journey. What matters is that you show up every single day, try, fail, and try again.

My advice for up-and-coming entrepreneurs would be not to fall in love with the idea of entrepreneurship, the shiny LinkedIn profiles or the crowning achievements of others. The challenges you face will put an end to the honeymoon phase quickly, and you need to be ready to do some hard work.

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