Heba Assem, 38, found that her resume was outdated and that she needed to continue self-learning to increase her chances of finding her dream job market. So, she and her sister launched ‘The Growth Formula’ platform, where students can acquire expertise in a variety of fields for free.
EG: Why did you start and what’s the passion behind?
Heba Assem: We always had a passion for economic and youth development but the idea came up when one day I find that my resume was out-of-date and that I needed to keep learning new skills to get a better job.
So after 15 years’ work in multinationals, my sister Samar Assem and me decided to start a business that supports youth development. To finance the platform, we started GTTDUN consulting, a firm for marketing and devising solutions for clients.
We devoted 50 per cent of our annual profits to launch our platform The Growth Formula www.thegrowthformula.org, where professionals and students can get expert-led learning for free or for an affordable fee.
Our strategy is to empower youth to acquire the skills needed for the job market of 2030 and to use the digital tools to grow and achieve a satisfactory income.
EG: What is your background?
HA: Political science, Cairo University. My post graduate studies were in economics and business. My co-founder and sister graduated from the German University in Cairo (GUC), where she majored in marketing and strategic management. We both worked in multinationals until we decided to start our initiative. We still work on other projects though but this project represents who we are and our true passion.
EG: What are the issues you are solving? What is your value proposition?
HA: Back in our day, there was no proper guidance on how we should approach our future career, except for misleading information about the top tier faculties. So we started this business in order to provide better guidance to youth in school, at university and even after being a professional in new skills needed in the job market to ensure they are highly employable or are ready to become successful entrepreneurs following science and continuous learning.
EG: Tell us more about the process, users, business model.
HA: We have a database of some of the market’s best experts in some vital fields and we have a platform to announce our new learning experiences through a huge list of partners where their communities can join, the user registers and will either pay a subsidised fee or obtain learning for free in case it was already funded by another partner or provided for free by instructor.
EG: What are your main challenges?
HA: Funding and technical support. We aim at marginal profits to keep supporting our youth while providing the top-notch learning experience that will truly add value. We are profitable though but in order to expand we need to have more funding put into this project.
EG: What are your achievements and future plan?
HA: We have managed to reach over 500,000 young professional and 5,000 SMEs during the pandemic and out of which we have managed to provide learning service and certification to over 27,000 of them, 78 per cent are from the Upper Egypt and delta governorates.
We count our biggest achievement in being able to deliver our training in Arabic, English and sign language and we were able to train 2 per cent of our total trainees from amazing young people with hearing and speech impediment. We also receive feedback from our trainees and we are happy to announce that 120 of our trainees have started their own businesses after our course. We are blessed to be part of people’s lives and we hope we can expand to all Africa by 2025 to train 1,000,000 young Africans.
EG: Do you think the entrepreneurial ecosystem is helping you?
HA: The startup ecosystem is not a walk in the park especially for female founders, but I always tend to count my blessings and I would say we have been lucky to have some great partners such as GEN Global Entrepreneurship Network, public and private universities as well as some ministries.
We have also gained the trust of some impactful public figures. We have given the first push to start by hosting our first learning event at the Greek Campus, a hub for Egyptian startups and educational events.
Discussion about this post