Book Your Ticket Online with Tazcara

Thousands of Egyptian students, workers, and employees travel daily between different governorates, and they may waste a lot of time trying to find a suitable bus ticket. Tazkara is an online platform allowing users to search for a bus ticket by selecting a pickup point, a destination, traveling and arrival dates, and online payment through Fawry or credit card. The platform offers an electronic booking system for companies that don’t have an online system.

EgyptInnovate interviewed Ali El-Deen Adham, founder and CEO of Tazcara during Tech Invest conference this year. Adham told the story of Tazcara and the biggest achievements they had so far ever since Tazcara graduated from Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center’s (TIEC) incubation cycle in April last year.

Impact

“Everyone liked the idea very much because we saved them the time to go out and book tickets for themselves and for their families, they might not find change to finish the transaction and it could take them a lot of effort and time just to book tickets, so now they’re able to book from their phones with an app,” said Adham.

Today, more than 8000 tickets are sold daily through the platform, more than 350 stations are available and more than 700 trips are carried out every day, and the phone application will be available soon, according to Tazcara’s website.

Challenges

Adham explained that entering the governmental sector was one of the biggest challenges they faced. “It’s really big and it takes a lot of effort to be able to deal with it,” said Adham.

Tazcara’s team got over this challenge by partnering with Fawry in September last year. "We convinced Fawry that we have a system that’s really strong and convenient for their work and they liked the idea so they worked with us immediately,” Adham continued.

Funding and Achievements

Tazcara got partial funding from TIEC, the first place and the prize of EGP 100,00 in Hona El-Shabab’s competition.  Additionally, Adham worked for a while as an uber captain to get funding for Tazcara.

Thanks to their win at Hona El Shabab, Tazcara got a lot of exposure for its website and their social media pages.

Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

“In the beginning, we had a very complicated system because we didn’t work hand in hand with the transportation companies, therefore, I advice young people to work on ground with clients without guessing if the system will work or not, and to do product validation by displaying a small part of the product to customers to get their feedback and then display the full product,” Adham concluded.