Egypt’s Entrepreneur Awards (EEA) announced the list of shortlisted finalists of its second edition that is powered by Tatweer Misr as a strategic partner, yesterday. The competition received applications from hundreds of entrepreneurs in more than 17 different categories and 91 contestants were shortlisted as finalists.

The finalists in the Marcom – Branding category were: Osman Badran and Taimour Othman from The Brand Bees, Ghada Wali and Yasmine Wali from Wali’s studio, Majd El Sherief, Mohamed Abbas and Dina Aly from Matter Branding.

“We are super excited, this is our second year, we won the EEA award last year, it means alot for us to be chosen for a second time and it shows how much trust they have in us. One of the things we are looking forward to this year is expanding to KSA and looking for opportunities there especially in Riyadh,” Majd El Sherif, co-founder of Matter Branding, told WAYA.

The finalists from the Real Estate category were Ramy Khorshed and Hussein El Kheshen from Sakneen, Khaled Sayyad from Prime Hospitality and Amr Mostafa from Milango.

“As a company we try to support the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Egypt in many ways, we have our own innovation competition where we try to find new ideas and new solutions for different parts of the real estate sector. Sometimes we adapt those ideas and establish them in our developments like we did with Basecamp. EEA is completing what we do as a company, through EEA we focus on recognizing the real success stories of companies established by entrepreneurs,” Ahmed Shalaby, President and CEO of Tatweer Misr, told WAYA.

The finalists for the Woman Entrepreneur of the Year award were Nadine Abdelghaffar from Art D Egypte, Dara Ghosheh from Dara’s Icecream and Yasmine Abdelkarim from Yalla fel Sekka.

“The Egyptian entrepreneurship ecosystem is growing very fast, we just need to give them support and recognition. I think the private sector should be more open to new innovate ideas, new technologies and new techniques. They should encourage startups to present their ideas and they also should participate in recognizing the success stories and showcases to other startups so that they know that there is an opportunity for them,” Shalaby added to his conversation with us.

As for the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award, the finalists were Mohamed Ben Halim and Belal El Magharbel from Maxab, Farah Emara and Omar Emara from Fresh Source, Ahmed Hammouda and Seif Amr from Thndr.

“It is a great privilege for us to be shortlisted and nominated. We hope to be an inspiration for others and get to tell our story and hopefully inspire other entrepreneurs out there to join this very tough journey,” Belal El Magharbel, CEO and co-founder of Maxab, said to WAYA.