Egypt's Qme Raises US$3 Million Round Led By UAE-Based AHOY
The startup will use the funds to enhance its technology stack and validate new markets.
Egypt-based B2B software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup Qme has raised US$3 million in a seed funding round led by AHOY, a UAE-based multisector technology company, alongside a group of angel investors from the GCC.
Founded in 2022 by Maged Negm, Qme is an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven platform addressing inefficiencies in queuing systems and appointment bookings across the MENA region.
Commenting on the investment his startup has secured, Negm, who is also the startup's CEO, told Inc. Arabia that “the funds will be mainly allocated to scale and enhance our technology stack, validating new markets, and forge deeper partnerships.” In addition, the company is also exploring opportunities beyond Egypt. “We are currently validating a couple of markets, especially in GCC and West Africa,” Negm revealed.
Qme is a part of AHOY’s Startup Builder Initiative, which aims to support 10,000 entrepreneurs and 30,000 software developers in MENA by 2030. Through this initiative, Qme will leverage AHOY’s expertise in logistics, aviation, and traffic management.
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With 92 percent of appointments in key sectors still made via phone (leading to a 31 percent no-show rate), Qme's platform aims to streamline the process. Since its commercial launch in late 2023, Qme has reduced waiting times from 116 minutes to 14 minutes and lowered phone booking no-show rates to below 1 percent. It has also digitized paper-based systems, saving an estimated 50,000 square meters of paper.
However, Negm acknowledged that getting the region to adopt digital solutions like Qme’s is not an easy task. “The problem [is] that the market [has] been having great standalone booking solutions, queuing solutions, and payments solutions for a long time, but without having them integrated in the right way, change is really hard,” he said. “The secret recipe is in interesting solutions in one infrastructure.”
Meanwhile, as artificial intelligence (AI) solutions gain traction in B2B, with some suggesting they could even overtake SaaS, Negm sees them driving its evolution instead. “A lot of voices believe that AI is going to kill SaaS, which I strongly disagree with – it will just reshape it,” he said. “So, I believe during the next years, we should stay focused on main problems that we are fixing, not on AI itself, while being agile.”
Pictured on image Maged Negm, CEO and co-founder of Qme. Image courtesy Qme.
