Seamless Xtra’s August Skinner speaks with Abdelrahman Sherief, Co-Founder and VP of Growth at Taager. Taager is a social e-commerce platform that supports merchants in implementing end-to-end logistics.
In this interview below, they look at the origins of the business, how it has successfully scaled and why Morocco could be a key market for this e-commerce platform.
Let’s start off with exploring a little bit more about your startup journey and the vision for the company. So could you share the story behind the founding of the company and what inspired you to start this venture and how has the vision for the company evolved since its inception?
So we started at the end of 2019, only a couple of months before the COVID. We went public and we launched online and in December, 2019, and we actually started the infrastructure three or four months before that. The main idea behind starting Taager was trying to help others and empower them to create their own e-commerce business.
We’ve seen it actually during our experimentation phase that there are many people who struggle through the operations and the supply chain side of creating their own e-commerce business. So we thought we can empower them by making them only focus on the marketing and the commercial side of it, and we will take care of the rest. So we will take care of the operations, of the warehousing, of the procurement and the supply chain, everything that might be a hassle for those people. We will empower them to have their own e-commerce business without any struggles. So that was the idea in the beginning.
And then we thought about how we’re going to conduct the idea. We came up with our website and then our name, and we purchased the domain name and everything by September 2019. And then we went live and started our social media communication in December. I remember our first post on our Facebook page and our first ads and designs and the earliest logo before the one we have right now. That was in December and the journey started then.
It sounds like it’s gone through lots of changes as well since then. So I’d like to look at the growth and the scaling challenges then. As the VP of growth, what have been the most significant challenges you have faced and how have you managed to overcome these obstacles and maintain sustainable growth?
I think the main obstacle is coming up with the right vision and surrounding the company’s culture around it. For a startup, especially in the early stages, we have to have exponential growth especially in the in the first or the second year.
So, in order to do this, there has to be a lot of things happening together at the right time. You have to have the right model, the right conduct of business, the right people, the right culture. And you also have to have the right vision. So I think the biggest obstacle is how to deal with all these challenges in the beginning, especially in the early days. So for example, implementing the workflows and the SOPs to bind the company of all the different departments together to surround it around this vision.
The thing is that the culture of the company all comes down to the most minimalistic detail like how we’re talking with people, how we’re conducting our meetings, who are we hiring, our onboarding policies, you name it. Also coming up with the right operating system of the business and how we are planning our day to day as well as the far future. I this can all be categorised under the umbrella of having the business model and the right vision and the right conduct of business.
Now, you had four founders. Did you all have a similar vision or did you have moments where one of you wanted to do this and another person wanted to do that?
We had the same vision at the begnning that we need to empower anyone to have their own e-commerce business, but we had different views on how we were going to implement this vision so there were lot of discussions and talks.
So I had a view that instead of just neglecting it or eliminating it, we can put it to the ground and test it and see. But in order to be successful in that, we also have to be objective and it takes a lot of experience and effort to objectively accept that it’s not going to work. But at the end of the day, we did manage our differences and we aligned on the vision and how we’re conducting our business
So moving ont to looking at the future then. Given your experience in the e-commerce sector in Egypt, what emerging trends do you foresee in the future? And how is the company capitalising on these trends?
Well, actually our plan was mainly expand to other markets. We’ve already expanded to three more markets and we’re currently operating in Saudi Arabia, UAE, and also in Iraq as well as Egypt. We are also planning on expanding in more markets. We have on the lookout Morocco as a future market that we might think about expanding to. There are also other markets.
One more thing is how we’re going to optimize our service. Our level of service has to be more satisfying to our potential and current customers, which are merchants. We have to think about the macro economic impact on our business as well as how we’re going to cope with new trends like AI and new technologis around marketing and e-commerce. With all of these the changes happening right now and it’s imortnat that we embrace them instead of staying apart from them.
Abdelrahman just to pick up on your expansion plans. I’m curious what makes Morocco a place of interest to you? What are you seeing in Morocco right now?
Well, actually, Morocco is one of the biggest markets in Africa. It’s an emerging market as well with a big population, big demand, lots of purchasing power. Also, there is economic and and macroeconomic stability in the currency, which has been stable for quite a long time. It’s also an Arab nation so there some similarities between the Egyptian and Moroccan culture. Of course, we’re still in the testing and the experimentation phase, but it might be the next market to go to in the coming period.
Also, our business is based on the social commerce and dropshipping model, which is popular in Morocco. There is already an awareness in the Moroccan market around the idea of dropshipping and the idea of social commerce and making money through e-commerce businesses .
One more thing to add is the percentage of young people within the Moroccan population is high compared to the average. So the majority of our customers, the merchants, are mainly in the younger age group from 18 to 25 years and also from 25 to 31 years. And this segment is actually the biggest segment among Middle East countries.
In the case, Taager can probably have quite a big influence then as well, I can imagine?
Yes, within the industry its’s well known in Morocco compared to other Arab countries so it will be easier for us to introduce our business there. When we started in Egypt, we were actually the first to introduce this business model there. It took us some time to explain it and to introduce it to them and to our target audience.
Thank you very much for your insights, Abdelrahman. We look forward to having you speak at Seamless North Africa on the 2nd and 3rd of September.
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