Siham Elmejjad, tookeez: “Know-how has the potential to considerably rework the function of girls within the Moroccan financial system”

Based by sisters Wiam and Siham Elmejjad and Hicham Amadi, entrepreneurs who’ve created a number of IT corporations, the Moroccan fintech start-up tookeez is the primary loyalty program aggregation ecosystem, which generates worth for manufacturers, retailers and prospects. As a part of our GITEX particular, and in these pages devoted to girls’s tech, Siham Elmejjad, co-founder and CEO, agreed to reply our questions.

Your start-up tookeez raised 15 million dirhams in March from Azur Innovation Fund. How will this quantity contribute to the event of tookeez, and the way do you propose to protect the basics and sustainability of your startup throughout this growth?

On the identical time, these funds will assist the implementation of blockchain in our platform. This expertise is not going to solely strengthen the safety and transparency of our transactions but in addition facilitate the fluidity and portability of loyalty factors throughout completely different gamers and borders. This technological growth is crucial to take care of our lead within the sector and assure the sustainability of tookeez by consolidating our fundamentals round innovation and digital inclusion.

Do you take into account that this sort of fund is crucial to the event of the startup ecosystem? Are there any options?

Funds like Azur Innovation Fund play an important function within the startup ecosystem, offering not solely capital but in addition strategic assist.

I thank them for his or her belief and for the financing and growth alternative that they supplied us.

Nevertheless, options exist, together with crowdfunding, enterprise angels, and innovation loans which can be viable choices for startups relying on their particular wants.

Along with entry to financing, what do you assume are the primary areas to deal with to advertise entrepreneurship in Morocco, significantly digital?

It’s important to deal with a number of key points. First, strengthening entry to training and persevering with coaching in new applied sciences is essential. This implies supporting and increasing instructional applications devoted to digital and entrepreneurial expertise from an early age.

Secondly, it is very important simplify administrative and regulatory procedures for the creation and administration of companies.

Then, the event of strong technological infrastructure can also be important to ensure entry to dependable and reasonably priced web providers.

Lastly, it will be helpful to advertise a stronger tradition of innovation by way of incentives for revolutionary corporations, equivalent to tax benefits or subsidies for analysis and growth. By supporting native initiatives, authorities and personal establishments can stimulate a dynamic and resilient entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Public administrations and corporations in addition to massive Moroccan teams needs to be inspired, by way of tax benefits for instance, to encourage the start-up ecosystem by adopting their providers.

To advertise tookeez, you contact retailers and VSEs straight. How do you decide their degree of digital growth on the one hand, and their urge for food to speed up this growth on the opposite?

Digital adoption amongst retailers and VSEs in Morocco continues to be within the growth part, however their curiosity in digitalization is accelerating considerably. tookeez was designed to exactly handle this rising want by offering an easy-to-integrate answer that enables retailers of all sizes to reap the advantages of digitalization with out the prohibitive prices typically related to superior applied sciences.

Our platform offers an accessible loyalty software which not solely facilitates entry into the digital world but in addition presents SMEs a brand new supply of revenue and a chance to extend their buyer base. Utilizing tookeez, they’ll immediately flip loyalty factors into tangible advantages for his or her prospects, growing go to frequency and buyer satisfaction.

The extent of engagement we’re seeing clearly reveals that, regardless of an preliminary studying curve, there’s a sturdy urge for food for options that simplify enterprise operations and enhance buyer interplay. tookeez strives to make this transition as clean as doable, supporting retailers in every stage of their digital transformation.

The extent of participation of girls within the financial system stays low in Morocco. How, in your opinion, can tech reverse this pattern, each when it comes to entrepreneurship and employment?

Know-how has the potential to considerably rework the function of girls within the Moroccan financial system. By opening entry to digital instruments and on-line training platforms, tech can present girls with persevering with training {and professional} growth alternatives that have been beforehand inaccessible.

By actively integrating gender equality insurance policies and inspiring range inside groups, tech corporations also can create extra inclusive and equitable work environments. That is essential not solely to draw feminine expertise but in addition to retain them and encourage them to progress into management positions. That is certainly one of my commitments inside tookeez.

I hope that because the CEO of a FinTech startup, I’ll encourage future generations of girls to discover careers in tech.

Feedback collected by Selim Benabdelkhalek