💪 OUR FOUNDER OF THE MONTH — Every month, Founder of the Month 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 Mostafa Sedky, founder and CEO of Muncai.

My name is Mostafa Sedky, and I’m the founder of Muncai, a world-class 1.2k sqm physiotherapy center in ZED Park that combines German expertise and cutting-edge technology to deliver comprehensive solutions for individuals, athletes, and sports teams. We cater to anyone suffering from musculoskeletal or bone problems, both pre- and post-surgery, as well as those seeking conservative treatments without surgical intervention.

I studied sports science and physiotherapy at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). I moved to Germany at the age of 16 to play football professionally with FC Ingolstadt while completing my Abitur (German high school certificate). My days of playing football were cut short when I suffered a serious injury and had to have surgery on my back. The injury ended my career as a professional athlete and started my career as a physiotherapist.

It was my time in rehab at the Schön Klinik in Munich that first got me interested in the field. Post-surgery, I worked with Wolfhard Savoy, one of the best physiotherapists in Germany, who is today my mentor and my partner at Muncai, a portmanteau of Munich and Cairo. Our collaboration started with me asking him if I could intern at his clinic. He obliged, and while working there, I knew I wanted to get into the field professionally. Instead of pursuing a master’s after finishing my sports science degree, I started a second bachelor’s degree in physiotherapy.

Creating a rehab center like Muncai has been my dream since 2015. At the time, Savoy and I were working together with the Ahly football team and traveling back and forth from Germany to Egypt. We realized that there were good physiotherapists in Egypt; they just needed guidance and a proper system to follow. We conducted a market study, created a business plan, and made our financial projections. Then the first big devaluation hit, so we had to throw it all out. It sort of continued like that for the next several years. Every time we had a plan, something would happen, and we would hit pause.

I was hired to work with Egypt’s national football team in 2019, but I continued to be based in Germany, where I lived for a total of 13 years. In 2022, we revisited the business plan based on a much higher USD exchange rate. Most of our equipment is imported, so we had a lot of foreign-currency CapEx, but we decided to push forward. We opened Muncai a year ago in 2025.

Our aim was to elevate the physio experience and provide everything under one roof. We offer the full cycle of treatment, from helping you find a doctor to conducting a functional assessment, taking you through therapy, and finally training to rebuild strength and mobility. We have a large gym area with electromagnetic machines and an anti-gravity treadmill, a climbing wall, and we will soon open our rooftop pool for hydrotherapy.

I want our patients to feel like they’ve started to get better the moment they walk through the door. My wife, who is an architect, is our designer, and she’s created a space that is as aesthetically pleasing as it is functional. Our nine treatment rooms incorporate the same soothing color scheme as the rest of the facility and have wooden ceilings, so that when you’re lying on your back, you feel more comfortable.

Our biggest challenge has been building the right team. Approximately 4k people each year graduate as physiotherapists in Egypt. It’s a large number, but finding people who are the right cultural fit is challenging. I’m not concerned about skills because skills can be taught. It's the agility, the flexibility, and the right attitude that I’m looking for. Nonetheless, we have managed to put together an excellent team of therapists who have all been trained in-house by my partner, who comes in from Germany to conduct the training course.

It’s also challenging to juggle my travel schedule with running a business I’m very hands-on with. I have to be away for a month and a half with the national team at the World Cup. Before that, it was the Africa Cup. I sometimes travel with players who need to have surgery in Germany, and I’ve also been the physiotherapist for the national modern pentathlon team since 2022. It can be hectic, but I’m making it work.

The best piece of business advice that I received is: Look at the top line and don’t fixate on the bottom line. Revenue is the most important thing when you’re starting a business because it’s proof of market demand. The expense side is also important, but revenue is what drives a business.

Having the emotional intelligence to manage people is also extremely important. Motivating people to want to do the work is more important and more difficult than forcing them to get the job done.

We’ve learned a lot in our first year of operation. We’re doing something completely new in Egypt, so in many ways, we’re still testing the market and learning a lot — but so far, so good despite the challenges. We’re seeing a lot of demand for the services that we offer. Even during periods when we were told things would be slow, like summer and Ramadan, we were not impacted. I’m very proud of what we have achieved. We are looking to grow, but not necessarily right away. We’re being told that we need to be in New Cairo and Alexandria, but before we expand, we need to make sure that the quality of our service won’t be compromised in any way.