Egyptian App wins 2nd best mobile startup worldwide

The entrepreneurs behind Raye7, a phone app setting out to be the Middle East’s next Blabla Car, were recognised as the world’s second best mobile startup at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Samira Negm and her brother Ahmed Negm, who was featured among CairoScene’s 25 entrepreneurs under 25 last August, co-founded the carpooling application in 2014. Having participated at the Arab World Mobile Challenge last January in Algeria, the startup founders reached the #MWC16 Global Mobile Challenge finals, where they competed against nine other startups from Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

“I'm thrilled to have won; but today I'm in the office because winning is now part of the past; we are focusing our efforts on how to deliver this service to as many organizations and companies possible. We want to have all Cairo commuters turn their traffic problem into cash,” Ahmed Negm told CairoScene just one day after the award ceremony.

Among the startups pitching against Raye7 at the competition powered by the IE School of Business were Denmark's Kidsy, geared for educators to manage their work with children; Philippines' 1Export, built for SMEs; and South Africa's virtual wallet Mali Mobile. Racking up the first place was Dutch app 'Whatson planner', followed by Raye7 and 'ArtAsian', from Kyrgyzstan.