Agreement between ITIDA, PepsiCo Egypt to expand regional shared services through its center in Cairo

CAIRO – 4 November 2021: The Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat has witnessed the signing of a cooperation agreement between the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) and PepsiCo Egypt. The aim is to expand its regional shared services operations in PepsiCo’s Cairo Business Services (CBS) Hub.

ITIDA CEO Amr Mahfouz and PepsiCo Egypt Chairman and CEO Mohamed Shelbaya signed the agreement in the presence of CBS Leader Nagia El Haraki and officials from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) and PepsiCo Egypt.

 

The three-year agreement aims at increasing the Egyptian exports of IT products and services, including the BPO and shared services, through collaborating with PepsiCo Egypt to expand its services' delivery to different markets from the Cairo Hub. The agreement will help provide the company with trained manpower and create at least 200 new job opportunities for young Egyptians, thus strengthening the country’s global position on the BPO and shared services industry map.

Talaat underlined that MCIT fully supports PepsiCo’s selection of Egypt as a hub for delivering BPO services across its different branches worldwide. He praised the new partnership which will create excellent job opportunities for Egyptian youth, as part of an ambitious strategy to empower and train young people in languages and digital tools to compete in the global labor market in this field. This reflects Egypt’s remarkable position as an attractive destination for providing this type of services, as well as its regional leadership in the Middle East and Africa in that major industry.

For his part, Mahfouz stressed that ITIDA is committed to boosting the Egyptian market capability to attract more shared and offshore services centers, an industry that is booming as a result of the spread of digital solutions and increased adoption of international institutions and multinationals to policies that aim to improve the quality of support services while reducing the cost of operations and Human Resources (HR). ITIDA is executing an ambitious strategy to triple the size of BPO and ITO exports over the next five years, Mahfouz added.

Furthermore, Shelbaya stated that PepsiCo Egypt is pleased to collaborate with MCIT. He commended ITIDA efforts in boosting the shared services sector and qualifying young people for professional work, thus helping attract international companies to Egypt. He added that the partnership is within PepsiCo's vision to support young people, enhance expertise and create more job opportunities to attain sustainable development in line with Egypt Vision 2030.

CBS Leader Nagia El Haraki highlighted that PepsiCo Egypt has been providing shared services since 2019, making Cairo Hub the main center for delivering those services in the Middle East, Africa, and Pakistan. She added that the company targets doubling the number of employees over the next three years and hiring a highly qualified Egyptian workforce specialized in sales, marketing, HR, and supply chain.

El Haraki pointed out that women make 50% of the total number of employees in Cairo Hub. This comes in line with PepsiCo's strategy of adopting diversity and inclusion within the work environment.

It is worth noting that the shared services centers—as part of an organization or as an external provider—help integrate and merge the business processes and services used by multiple departments in a single organization and execute them according to mutually agreed standards and criteria in a way that helps reduce costs and maintain high quality.