Moroccan Startupper Selected For EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women Program

Rabat – Founder and CEO of Moroccan marketplace MyTindy Aida Kandil has been selected among 52 women entrepreneurs in the Middle East, Africa, India, and Europe for the 2022 class of “EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women.”

Launched in 2008, the program every year selects dozens of women founders of profitable small businesses with the objective of providing them with access to professional networks, mentoring programs, and additional resources.

This year, Morocco was solely represented by Aida Kanbil and her startup MyTindy. The commercial platform connects Moroccan artisans with international customers. The platform currently works with over 350 local artisans and ships to 40 countries.

Earlier this week, the startup was selected to represent Morocco during a five-day working visit to India. The visit, which started today and is expected to last until October 30, aims to introduce five leading Moroccan startup founders to the Indian experience.

Excited to take part in the tour, Kandil told Morocco World News that the visit would be a “great way to look at what has been done already and to have a look into the future.”

MyTindy was the only female-led Moroccan startup put forth by Morocco’s Ministry of Digital Transition of Administrative Reforms and the Agency of Digital Development (ADD) from a pool of 38 applications.

Given the low representation of women entrepreneurs in Morocco and the MENA region as a whole, MyTindy is often the only female-led startup represented in entrepreneurship-related events in the country.

In July, Kandil stressed the need for female representation in the Moroccan startup ecosystem in an interview with Morocco World News.

“We need more women to take on the stage and to become startup co-founders or founders,” she told MWN during Expo Day of Plug&Play Batch 3 in Casablanca, adding that the absence of women entrepreneurs is making us miss “on a big chunk” of game-changing projects.

As the Moroccan entrepreneur put it, “Everybody has an idea and it is time to dare.”

Despite state-run and regional efforts to boost female entrepreneurship in MENA and Africa, the majority of startup funding in the MENA goes to male-led startups. Women-led startups secured only 0.03% of total funds raised in September, the lowest percentage so far in 2022.

The highest-recorded rate this year was 12% ($35 million) in April, which was an exception given that it was fully accredited to UAE-based platform Millennial Brands.

With the exception of the month of April, the percentage of funds raised by female-led entrepreneurs in MENA ranges mostly between below 1%, and less than 2% throughout the year.