At 24, Mostafa Kandil quit his job with a lofty goal: to redefine the $1 trillion global mass transit market, utilizing the power of AI and machine learning. Inspired by his upbringing in Egypt, the struggles he faced traveling home from Cairo to see his family, and the lack of safe transportation options for his mother and sisters, Kandil launched Swvl in 2017.

Kandil started his career at Rocket Internet in 2014, where he launched the car sales platform Carmudi in the Philippines, which became the largest car classifieds company in the country in just six months. He then served as Rocket Internet’s Head of Operations. In 2016, Kandil left Rocket Internet for Careem, a ride-sharing company and the first unicorn in the Middle East, where he supported the platform’s geographic expansion into new markets. Careem is now a subsidiary of Uber, based in Dubai, with operations across 100 cities and 15 countries.

Kandil graduated from the American University in Cairo in 2014 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Petroleum and Energy Engineering.

Youssef Salem is the CFO of Swvl who, at 29 years old, will become one of the youngest CFOs of a Nasdaq listed company at the close of the $1.5bn business combination with Queen’s Gambit which makes Swvl the first $1bn+ unicorn from the Middle East to list on Nasdaq.

Youssef is also an Advisor at Moelis & Company with 9 years of investment banking experience with Moelis and prior to that with QInvest. He executed > 20 infrastructure M&A, capital raises, and financings with > $65bn in value. These include leading the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company Transformation Program which generated > $25bn of proceeds from > 10 transactions, and the Saudi Aramco Portfolio Optimization Program which debuted this year with the $12bn transactions with EIG led consortium. He also executed > 25 transactions across other sectors such as TMT, FIG, and real estate, and sovereign advisory. These include leading the acquisition of a stake in the Empire State Realty Trust, debut Sukuk for Goldman Sachs and Governments of Luxembourg and Hong Kong, and venture debt for InMobi.

Youssef was previously an Adjunct Professor of Practice at the American University in Cairo (AUC). He has a Bachelor of Science from AUC and is a CFA Charter-holder and Fellow of the Society of Actuaries.