Growing up in Mansura governorate, Asmaa Setit, 36, fits the term ‘jack of all trades’. She is on a mission to change the healthy food industry. With a background in project management in three small businesses, Setit founded the ‘Eat Good’ platform in 2015 to help people with health problems find healthy food online. In this interview, Setit tells The Egyptian Gazette about her startup, the challenges it faces and her achievements.
Can you tell us about the passion behind your startup?
Seven years ago, it was hard to find many healthy food options in Mansoura where I lived. At the same time, most of the major supermarket chains were present in Cairo. I had to travel to Cairo every week for my groceries. This gave me the idea of launching an online market for healthy food.
Throughout the validation stage, I was introduced to many health problems, including – among others – allergies, cancer, and heart diseases, that needed specific products. I contacted many importers and factories to encourage them to bring their products to the local market, given high demand.
Your business background has helped you in launching your project, I guess?
I am a construction project manager. I started three businesses in IT and interactive toys. I established an academy for kids. I also have experience in diverse business fields where I did side jobs, including marketing, design, and soft skill teaching.
Having all these skills helped me when I found my passion in the food business. I just wanted to help people find healthy food.
What are the problems you are solving and your value proposition?
We serve thousands of people who have health problems, need a special diet and want to eat healthy food or follow a diet for weight loss or building muscles.
Some people have no idea about the right food they should eat when they have a health problem. After all, treatment with drugs is not enough. Sometimes pills lose their effectiveness when they interact with some types of food. Chemical reactions usually happen inside our bodies. This is why we spread awareness about how we eat, especially when we have a health issue. We spread this awareness in parallel with normal operations in our business. Our slogan is ‘You Are What You Eat’. We help people eat healthy and tasty food without feeling guilty or deprived.
We offer high quality and a wide variety of products from international and national brands. We encourage small businesses and help them grow by providing products that meet our high standards on our website and deliver them all over Egypt.
Can you tell us more about your process, users, and business model?
People can reach out our website through social media, YouTube and Google. Health coaches also sometimes recommend us. They can search by diet or category to find the products they want. Customers add the products to the cart and once they finish the check-out process, they get a notification with shipping time and details.
We deal with health problems like allergies and help customers get maximum benefits from the products and the diet plan they follow. We provide them with recipes, nutrition information, and even the drug interactions that happen with food, and the follow-up process after the purchase. This makes our customers satisfied with our services.
Our business model is direct e-commerce, so the revenue comes from direct sales on the website.
What are your main challenges?
The food e-commerce market is very challenging and rich at the same time. There are new competitors every day who imitate what we do. The market also becomes more extensive due to marketing campaigns. Sometimes we lose market shares.
Some competitors make customers lose confidence in local brands because of their lack of knowledge about the products they provide.
The delivery system still needs to be more connected by involving new technologies.
We have struggled all those years by bootstrapping, depending on our own investments and the money provided by family members and friends. Nonetheless, expansion and getting more market shares need a considerable budget.
What are your achievements and future plans?
We have two warehouses in Mansoura and Cairo. We seek funding to open new warehouses all over Egypt. This will help us sell more fresh products that need fast delivery. We also develop an application that can be easy and user-friendly.
We started meal delivery for the same reasons: helping people eat healthy and tasty meals that are suitable for their health conditions. We were the first in the market to develop bread and desserts for diabetics without sugar or carbohydrates. We entered the food business with a low budget and a small team. We succeeded in getting a significant market share, thanks to the dedication and hard work of our team. We have a vision to be a highly reputed e-commerce company with so many warehouses in big cities worldwide.
We will start packaging our products in co-operation with a German brand soon.
Do you think the entrepreneurial ecosystem helps you?
I think the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Egypt now helps startups all fields. We saw investments going to startups from the beginning until they grew and expanded. We need to trust hard working women entrepreneurs. They prove they can succeed in any field, especially in leading businesses, even in technology and e-commerce.
