Bilal El-Maghraby: From Careem to Maksab, Revolutionizing Egypt's Grocery Supply

Bilal El-Maghraby is an entrepreneur who decided to step away from a traditional career path to build a tech venture. His goal? To tackle one of the most complex parts of the local economy: grocery supply chains. In 2018, Bilal made a big decision to leave his role as General Manager for Careem in Cairo. He was part of the early team that helped Careem grow across the region. This wasn't an easy choice, especially since he had previously left his family business looking for a different path. But his time at Careem gave him a clear view of how to build a major tech company starting right here in the Middle East. This inspired him to think about applying a similar model to a traditional industry that really needed a boost in efficiency. Bilal noticed that small shops in Egypt, which make up about 90% of the grocery market, faced a really long and complicated distribution process. Products could go through six or seven steps before reaching the customer! This pushed up costs and created issues with pricing and quality. That's when he got the idea to create a digital platform. This platform would cut out the middlemen and directly connect suppliers with retailers. Also in 2018, he co-founded "Maksab" with fellow entrepreneur Mohamed Bin Halim. Maksab became an e-commerce platform specifically designed to link food suppliers with those informal small stores. The company started small, from a warehouse on the outskirts of Cairo. Initially, their operations were almost entirely offline, but they gradually transformed into a fully integrated digital platform. Before long, Maksab grew rapidly, serving thousands of merchants. It allowed them to order inventory online, offering clear pricing and even access to credit. Suppliers also gained a lot from the platform's data, which helped them predict demand, make better purchasing decisions, and avoid having too much stock. Just two years after launching, Maksab successfully raised around $6.2 million in a seed funding round. This round included regional investors like Beco Capital, making it one of the largest early-stage investments for a startup in the region at that time. Bilal El-Maghraby holds a Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in the United States. This academic background clearly influenced his approach to solving operational efficiency problems with scalable tech solutions.