In Egyptian slang, "Baba El Shoghlana" (بابا الشغلانة) is the one person who supposedly owns the whole trade — the godfather of the industry, the only one who really knows how it's done.
In a recent appearance on Maa El Nass with TV presenter Mohamed Shalaby on Al Hadath Al Youm channel, our founder Mostafa Wanas put it bluntly: that person doesn't exist. And more importantly — having many competitors is one of the best things that can happen to your business.
▶️ Watch the clip on YouTube (Arabic)
Nobody owns the whole game
"There's no such thing as Baba El Shoghlana except as a joke," Mostafa said. No single person or company owns an entire field. The moment you believe you're the only one who matters, you stop learning — and the market moves on without you.
A crowded market is a listening market
Here's the counter-intuitive part: if you're completely alone in your niche, you'll exhaust yourself just getting people to hear about you. When many players are talking about the same industry, there's noise — and noise means the audience is already paying attention.
You don't have to build awareness for the whole category by yourself. The conversation already exists. Your only job is to stand out inside it.
Stand out like the best-dressed person at the party
Mostafa's analogy: think of the market as a party everyone is attending. The person who gets noticed isn't the one shouting the loudest — it's the sharpest-dressed one in the room.
In business terms: find the thing you know better than everyone else — a specific expertise, a deeper understanding, a skill your peers haven't mastered — and make it visible.
Compete like colleagues, not enemies
In Egyptian business talk, your competitor is your zameel — your colleague. That framing matters. Honest competition isn't a price war; in a mature market, prices end up close anyway. Real competition is about expertise, knowledge and understanding — offering a service that's genuinely a little better.
What this means for us at Wanas Apps
The business-software and Zoho services market across Egypt, the UAE and the Gulf is crowded — and we love that. It means businesses in the region are actively looking for digital transformation, and it pushes us to compete the honest way: with deeper expertise, better implementations and services that are a little better every day. That's the mindset behind how we work.
Watch the full conversation
This clip is part of Mostafa's interview on Maa El Nass with Mohamed Shalaby. Watch it on our YouTube channel, and if you'd like to talk about your own business systems, get in touch.