Egypt’s Qme closes $3 million seed round led by AHOY

Qme, a B2B SaaS startup based in Egypt, has successfully secured $3 million in seed funding in a round led by AHOY, a technology firm with a multi-sector focus, supplemented by a consortium of angel investors from the GCC. Founded in 2022 by Maged Negm, Qme leverages AI to revolutionize digital infrastructure through integrated booking, queuing, analytics, and payment solutions.

The investment aims to propel Qme's technological advancements, broaden its operational scope, and deepen its market partnerships. This funding marks a significant step in Qme's mission to streamline inefficient queuing and booking systems prevalent across the MENA region.

Qme addresses the substantial time loss associated with traditional queuing and booking methods, where individuals in key sectors spend, on average, six months of their lives waiting in line. Furthermore, the prevalent phone booking system, which constitutes 92% of appointments, suffers from a 31% no-show rate, underscoring the inefficiency problem.

Partnering with AHOY, a regional leader in logistics, aviation, and traffic management solutions, Qme is set to gain access to pioneering technology and extensive market expertise. "Our partnership with AHOY is a major milestone, strengthening our capacity to optimize real-world dynamics and transform customer experiences," stated Maged Negm, CEO and Co-Founder of Qme.

Since its commercial inception in the fourth quarter of 2023, Qme has serviced over 100,000 customers across the healthcare, banking, and government sectors, drastically cutting average wait times from 116 minutes to just 14 minutes. The platform has effectively reduced phone booking no-show rates to below 1% and transitioned paper-based queuing systems to digital, saving around 50,000 square meters of paper.

Jamil Shinawi, CEO of AHOY, praised Qme's platform for its alignment with AHOY's mission to alleviate real-world inefficiencies through innovative solutions. "Qme's ability to enhance customer journeys is perfectly in sync with our ethos of reducing everyday process friction," he noted.

Additionally, Qme is part of AHOY's ambitious Startup Builder Initiative, which aims to empower 10,000 entrepreneurs and support 30,000 software developers in the MENA region by 2030. This initiative focuses on fostering exponential innovation in essential infrastructure sectors like transportation, aviation, and smart city development.

This new capital infusion will enable Qme to expand its technology stack, extend its reach, and build stronger partnerships, positioning it to redefine interactions between businesses, governments, and customers and eliminate operational inefficiencies in the future.