How one startup is working to bridge the tech talent gap in MEA: Egyptian edtech startup Sprints bills itself as the Middle East and Africa’s (MEA) first edtech startup that offers hiring programs that assure employment. Amid mountinginvestorinterest in the concept, Enterprise sat down with co-founder and CEO Ayman Bazaraa (LinkedIn) to learn more about the origin story of the company, the approaches it takes to make its students employable, and the uses it makes of artificial intelligence to transform the learning experience.

Sound familiar? You may have read about the startup last week in Enterprise, when we reported on them closing a USD 3 mn bridge funding round.

What the company does: Founded in 2019 by Bazaraa and Bassam Sharkawy (LinkedIn), Sprints works to bridge the tech talent gap in the MEA region by offering online training programs to software developers, as well as crash courses in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data science, and cloud computing, among others.

“The name Sprints comes from the idea of an agile mindset,” Bazaraa explains. Each learning journey is composed of any number of sprints where one sprint lasts one week and represents one deliverable that is tailored to one project and one customer, Bazaraa told us. “Courses can last one sprint, two sprints, fourteen sprints, however many. It’s a fast process, but it’s iterative. This stimulates the business environment of any technology company.”

There’s a large gap between the Egyptian education system and the needs of employers: “A high proportion of Egyptian youth receive an education, but many graduates end up unemployed, or working in something outside of their studies. At the same time, companies struggle to grow because of difficulties in sourcing talent.” Bazaraa told us. Egypt’s workforce is keen and companies want to grow, but “there is a mismatch between the two sides,” Bazaraa added.

The motto and business model for the company is learn, work, and pay later. Students gain access to the course initially at no cost and only pay for the course after securing a job. “We work at scale with thousands of learners, so of course we account for some learners not getting hired. However, our hiring rate is 86%,” Bazaraa said.

Sprints has also partnered with the ministries of communication and social solidarity to finance the programs: “Once Sprints has assessed and vetted a learner, the ministry covers the costs of the training,” Bazaraa explained, adding that “the learner pays back the money at a zero-interest rate over three years.” The company has also worked overseas, embarking on projects in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Germany, Netherlands, and the US.

Private businesses are also an important part of their revenue streams: Sprints also receives money from businesses, “who pay Sprints a recruitment fee or finder fee when hiring our students.”

AI is crucial to all industries: “If a company says it doesn't need AI, it's wrong. I mean, even when setting up a kiosk on the street, I can give you use cases for AI,” Bazaraa argues. “At Sprints, we help to identify all the possible use cases of AI within a company and we help companies and individuals deploy the technology most effectively.”

Sprints will hear from employers first when preparing educational programs. “We call ourselves market driven because we listen to the needs of businesses while developing our courses and content. So, if there were 1k applicants for a position and only five people got the job, we look for the reasons that the others got rejected,” Bazaraa shared. “The problem with institutes and schools is that they don’t listen to the needs of the businesses. Businesses are the customers here, not the parents of the university students.”

What are the biggest skills that are missing from the market in Egypt? Insufficient English language skills and communication skills, as well as critical thinking skills, are the biggest reason that people do not get hired in Egypt, Bazaraa said. “This is why we create our content around character building and people skills. There are 30 attributes or data points with which we measure the learners, and with which learners can track their own progress.”

Investors are seeing the potential in Sprints. The company has raised USD 5 mn so far from multiple investors including Disruptech Ventures, EdVentures, Falak Startups, and Cubit Ventures. “We’ve also received help from multiple angel investors who have been present from the very beginning. They are possibly the most helpful people for us thanks to their networks and advice,” Bazaraa added.

The investments are fuelling big expansion plans. Sprints’ community so far amounts to 25k learners and this year the company plans to target 60k new users in new markets, Bazaraa tells us.

While mainly Egypt-based for now, Sprints is growing its global reach. “So far, we mostly operate from Egypt,” but Sprints has “partners in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria, and through these partners we can acquire businesses, clients, and so on,” Bazaars told us. “Our first physical expansion happened around two weeks ago when we opened in the UAE, and we’re also working to open in Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Jordan.”

And Sprints’ students are also heading overseas: “When it comes to the global companies we want to hire our graduates, Europe and the US are the major markets that we work in,” Bazaars said.

Ambitious targets: The company wants to hire 200k students in ten countries, Bazaraa told us. “We also want to become the first company to fully utilize AI for the whole end-to-end journey, from our pupil acquisition, assessment, content design, content creation, deliverables, correcting assignments, personalizing the learning journey — all of it.”

Sprints wants to educate 1 bn people in the next ten years. “We want to be present in every country in the world. When you ask anyone in tech where they got their skills and how they found a job, we want people to say they learned from Sprints,” Bazaraa says. “Or when you ask someone where they want to learn, they’d say that I want to learn with Sprints.”

Your top education stories for the week:

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  • Two vocational academies in the works: The National Telecommunication Institute signed a cooperation protocol with Huawei to set up two training academies specialized in advanced tech and fiber optics. (Statement)
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