About me
Omar Khalifa graduated from the American University in Cairo with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science / International Relations.
After his graduation, Omar followed his dream to launch his own media company in which he called Omedia in 2009. Specialized in publishing services, Omedia had a very successful publishing portfolio that generated $150,000 in sales revenue in its first year.
Following the January 2011 revolution, he faced a turning point in his company and was in debt for 3 consecutive years from 2011-2014. Egypt struggled with its stalling economy and Omedia lost its entire publishing portfolio.
In an effort to get the company back up to pursue his dream, Omar rebuilt Omedia from scratch with an aim to diversify the company’s revenues; he expanded the company’s activities by managing the outdoor advertising sales of Tarek Nour Communications, and focused on thermal paper advertising to be the first company to use banks’ queuing tickets for advertising purposes - Omedia signed an exclusive agreement with the Commercial International Bank to use its tickets for advertising purposes.
Late 2015, Omar launched Shaghalni, which was an idea he had back then while he was still studying. Inspired by the employment fairs that granted the best jobs to graduates at different universities, he wanted to create an online platform that serves all Egyptians, and the name was Shaghalni.
Once the website was in beta version with only 500 users, he had a 5-minute meeting to pitch to Egyptian billionaire Eng. Naguib Sawiris the idea, which resulted in his decision to invest in the company to fight unemployment.
Since Shaghalni’s launch in 2016, it has approximately 5000 registered companies and a database of over 1.7 million jobseekers. After several years of trial and error with the digital model, Omar decided to go brick and mortar with Shaghalni by building the first hiring center in Egypt, and he chose Sohag as a starting point to combat one of the highest unemployment rates in Egypt, where jobseekers get interviewed instantly and gain access to training programs and financial solutions.
After the initial success of the first hiring center, Omar had the opportunity to pitch the idea in Shark Tank and managed to land investment from all five sharks, which led to establishing a central hiring center serving Greater Cairo.
To date, Shaghalni contributed in employing approximately 10,000 jobseekers in decent jobs across Egypt.
Omar is also a professional angler with 12 IGFA World Records and represented Egypt in several Big Game World Championships.
