My Morning Routine: Marwan Kenawy, CEO and co-founder of Dsquares

Marwan Kenawy, CEO and co-founder of Dsquares: Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. Speaking to us this week is Marwan Kenawy (LinkedIn), CEO and co-founder of Dsquares.

Edited excerpts from our conversation:

Business and entrepreneurship have been my passion since college, when I started my first venture during freshman year. These passions built on my experience as a child and teenager. I played football and boxed until I was 18, which taught me about competition, commitment, and resilience. I graduated high school from DEO, the German school in Cairo, where my intellect, discipline, and character were shaped. That foundation carried into my first business endeavor during college, and after graduating, I joined Vodafone for six years before returning to entrepreneurship in 2012. I’ve been building companies ever since.

Dsquares is a loyalty and rewards service provider working with businesses across the Middle East and Africa. As co-founder and CEO, my job is to set the direction of the company, build the right team and culture, and keep us growing while staying focused on long-term ambition. I’m also a partner in Lucky One, Connect Money, and Impact for Learning and Development, which means I stay involved across different businesses and industries.

In 2012, we noticed something most businesses were ignoring: transactions were happening, but no real relationship was behind any of them. Customers came and went, and businesses kept spending on acquisition without ever asking why people weren’t coming back. We saw that gap and built Dsquares to close it. Our first project was with Vodafone Egypt, then Procter and Gamble came on board, followed by the National Bank of Egypt. Once the biggest names trusted us, others found the confidence to follow, and that’s when we knew we had stumbled onto something the market genuinely needed.

The hardest part was building something from scratch in a market that doubted what we were selling. Loyalty wasn’t seen as a profit center; instead, it was treated as a marketing afterthought. Convincing businesses to invest seriously in something they didn’t fully understand took real work, so we proved ourselves, client by client, industry by industry. Every program had to deliver real return on investment (ROI), and slowly, the market started to believe it too.

Two trends stand out to me right now: ecosystem thinking and agentic AI. No single brand builds loyalty alone anymore. The strongest programs today are built on cross-business partnerships, where a bank, a retailer, and a telco can plug into the same ecosystem and let customers earn and redeem value across their whole lifestyle. That’s the model we’ve built at Dsquares for years, and it’s now becoming the global standard.

Agentic AI is pushing us past simple personalization into systems that can act on a customer’s behalf, anticipating needs and managing loyalty value in real time. Both trends point to the same shift: loyalty is becoming a connected, intelligent layer across a customer’s life rather than a standalone program.

The next major milestone for Dsquares is preparing for a potential listing next year, either in Egypt or Saudi Arabia. Taking the company to public markets would be a major achievement for us and an important new chapter in our journey.

My day starts with exercise at home, followed by breakfast and coffee while I catch up on the news and social media. I use the early morning to make calls that need my attention before the day gets busy, and I usually head to the office around 11 am. Reading EnterpriseAM is part of that routine, alongside the rest of my morning news.

No two workdays look quite the same, but most involve internal meetings with the team, alongside client meetings, and a fair amount of travel given our operations span the Middle East and Africa. A big part of my role is making sure everyone is aligned on the bigger picture and moving quickly on what matters most.

The one constant in my day is time with my wife and kids, Omar and Hana. No matter how busy things get, I make time for them. They keep me grounded and put everything else into perspective.

I stay focused by building routines into both my personal and professional life. I try not to get pulled into small distractions and instead keep my attention on what really matters. I review my priorities every week to make sure my time is going where it should.

I’m entering the next stretch of my life looking to grow on every front — personally, professionally, and everywhere in between. On the personal side, I’m looking to pick up new hobbies, give more time to exercise and personal development, and keep learning about the latest developments in technology and AI. Professionally, the ambition is to grow Dsquares into more countries and invest in companies that can help us scale faster and complement our services. The goal is to maintain our regional leadership and eventually become a global leader in loyalty and customer engagement. I’ve also had the chance to attend executive entrepreneurship programs at Columbia Business School and Harvard University.

Until a few years ago, I honestly wasn’t very good at work-life balance, so work was taking up too much of my life. I’ve since worked to find the right mix between work, family, friends, personal development, and wellbeing. I’m still working on it, but I’ve learned that building a successful business matters, though it shouldn’t come at the expense of living my life.

Football is probably the easiest way for me to switch off, whether I’m playing or watching. I’m an Al Ahly fan, and I love traveling to watch matches whenever I can, especially the Premier League and the World Cup. Travel in general is something I make time for outside work too, alongside movies, time with close friends, and quality time with my children. When I have more time, nothing beats the beach, especially the sea and the North Coast.

I gravitate toward podcasts featuring successful entrepreneurs, ranging globally from Elon Musk to regional leaders like Naguib and Samih Sawiris. I find it interesting to hear how people who’ve built major businesses think, make decisions, and look at the future. One thing I’ve learned is that building a business and making money isn’t enough. At some point, you need to figure out how to actually enjoy your life, since success should give you more freedom to live meaningfully rather than become the whole point of living.

Excel at what you do and let success follow, but never think too highly of yourself once it arrives, because luck plays just as big a role as ability. That’s the best piece of advice I’ve received, and it came from Samih Sawiris. I’ve always held onto it. You should work hard and stay humble, because success is never only about your own talent. Timing, circumstances, the people around you, and a good amount of luck all play their part.

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