Interview With The Founder of Sawarni.net; a Service Hub For Photographers and Customers

In Egypt, as a customer it’s very difficult to reach talented photographers – especially if you are not seeking wedding photographers. You have to go through the hassle of searching for the good ones through the word of mouth or spending many hours surfing different platforms to find what you’re looking for. That’s why Sawarni.net was founded: to be the customer’s agent and to guide and help them from the beginning till the end of process.

And if you’re a photographer in Egypt, then you are probably facing a big challenge in marketing yourself and your work especially if you have the talent and in early stage of your career. You don’t know where to show your portfolio, or to whom, or may be you need a chance to show your skills. That’s why Sawarni.net was founded: to gather all the talented photographers in one service hub that guide and connects them with clients, customers, and other vendors serving and providing photographers with what they need.

We interviewed CEO and founder of Sawarni.net, to tell us more about it:

      Q: Tell us more about Sawarni.net.

Sawarni.net is the newest and first service hub for photographers and customers. Our website is just a start and cover page to all our services that everyone will benefit from, for example customers will feel the difference when we help them to get any service they want with the best quality they deserve and with us acting as their agent. On the other side, photographers will feel the difference when we help them in making the work process with customers smooth and easy. Through our platform, customers can book free meetings and also compare between the portfolios of different photographers. All we care about in Sawarni.net is the quality of the work.

      Q: How do you choose the photographers to be on your platform?

Our priority in Sawarni.net lies in the quality of the work. Our criteria is to choose talented photographers who have potential to grow – it’s not important if they are well-known or not, all what matters is the talent, the quality of work, and the photographer’s potential to think out of the box for constant improvement.

As for beginner photographers, we market them out in the market and help them until they have a good portfolio to be exposed, and then we add their portfolios on our platform. For us when a young talented photographer is willing to join us, we help him to reach the best portfolio that matches his talents and add it on our platform and we continue to help him to reach the level he wants.

      Q: How did you first get the idea of creating such a platform?

In June last year, I was searching for a good product photographer to shoot some security system equipment. It was very difficult to find one so I had to call people and ask for recommendations. Then I noticed that there’s a big problem in the photography market, which is that good and talented photographers don’t know how to market themselves. That’s when the idea hit me to create one place that gathers all talented photographers with different specialties in one place that can serve customers and photographers all together at the same time.

      Q: When was the platform launched? And what did it achieve till now?

Sawarni.net was officially launched in the end of May 2017. We now have 22 high-quality photographers covering most of categories. There are lots of updates coming out in the next 3 months that will make it easier for customers and photographers to work together easily and smoothly under Sawarni umbrella.

      Q: How do you convince people to use Sawarni.net?

Sawarni.net is a service hub - not a directory hub - that’s what makes it different than other photography websites. What we do in Sawarni.net is that we offer help to our clients based on their criteria and we provide them with the best options that meet their requirements. So, we are their agents. We’re there to help them out from beginning to the end with the team that they deserve and the quality they want within the budget they decide.

We also guarantee that the photographers are committed and the customer is satisfied, that’s why we’re involved in the whole process till the end.

      Q: How is Sawarni.net funded?

It’s a self-funded platform. However, right now we take very small percentage from every order done from the photographer through our platform.

      Q: Tell us more about the challenges you’ve faced throughout the journey?

The biggest challenge was convincing photographers to use the platform, especially that there were lots of failed attempts from other people around the same idea. But I found out that the best way to do it is by being involved in whole service process, not just a bridge, and to reassure the photographers that we’re here to help them out and to reassure the customers that we’ll provide them with the best quality and the best budget. We are with our customers and photographers through the whole journey.

      Q: What advice do you give to young and aspiring entrepreneurs?

The most important things you should have to build your own startups are:

1. Have the most suitable team members who can work together, believe, and share the same vision.
2. Before marketing your idea, go down the market and make sure your idea is actually needed.
3. Commitment and dedication to your work no matter what happened.
4. Be open to listen to others’ opinions. Don’t worry during the whole journey you will change, adjust, and may be cancel some of your ideas just to make it work.

One last advice is: I got this advice from my father; consider this business journey as your life. You will face a lot of rejections and failures during your journey, if you gave up because of rejection or failure that means you gave up on your life. We don’t give up on life; we make it work no matter what.