Egyptian cleaning services startup Jinni has signed commercial contracts with 20 of the biggest companies in the country as it expands quickly.
Founded in 2016 by a husband and wife Mostafa Ghannam and Alaa Shams, Jinni provides residential and corporate clients with access to different types of cleaning services via its mobile app.
The idea for the startup resulted from the founders’ own struggle with finding a professional cleaning service provider to look after their new home, and since its launch Jinni has served more than 3,000 customers, delivering more than 12,000 orders.
“Egyptian households rely extensively on external help when it comes to house-cleaning and chores. Navigating the informal sector for finding and hiring help is a tricky ordeal, often leading to insecurity, inconsistency and overall dissatisfaction,” Shams told Disrupt Africa.
“Many residential households struggle to find a competent cleaner for their house who’s also trustworthy, punctual, communicative, and reliable. The result ends up usually with the clients compromising one or more of these fronts to prioritise the trait that is important to them most. This is where Jinni comes in.”
It is not just a B2C entity, though, with much of its growth fuelled by more than 20 commercial contracts with top corporations in Egypt. These include Uber, Wadi Degla for Urban Development, Capital Group Properties, Mondelez International, and Egyptian Steel.
Jinni is now scaling quickly, having raised a six-figure dollar investment from AUC Angels, the newly-launched angel investor group based out of the American University in Cairo, late last year. It is currently available in Cairo and Giza, but will soon be expanding across Egypt and then into the rest of the MENA region.
The startup has also recently launched an academy through which it has trained more than 60 professional cleaners.
“We’ve managed to maintain a 95 per cent utilisation rate for all the housekeepers working in the residential sector, and a retention rate at 90 per cent in a field known for a high turnover rate,” Shams said.
