Interview Summary
Medhat Khalil is the founder and chairman of Egypt-based business group Raya Holding. Khalil begins the interview by sharing about his childhood in Cairo. Reminiscing about rowing as a formative influence on his entrepreneurial journey, he highlights how the sport taught him teamwork, harmony, hard work, and discipline. Upon graduating from Cairo University’s Faculty of Commerce in 1977, Khalil started a distribution business, whose failure led him to join the Egyptian-based Arab Investment Bank.
In the early 1980s, Khalil joined the sales team of IBM. During his last year at IBM, he initiated discussions about a potential collaboration with the company. With the efforts of a team of 16 people, this product, a core retail application for sales, was wrapped up after 2 years. However, the phasing out of the OS/2 system, which the application used, caused this project to collapse.
Khalil founded the IT companies Protech in 1993 and Oratech in 1997, which were merged to form Raya Holding in 1999. Khalil has served as Chairman and Managing Director since 1999. The merger helped raise financing and fast-track growth, but it presented integration challenges, which Khalil discusses were overcome by shifting focus from task management to people management.
Khalil proceeds to discuss Raya’s growth and projects. In addition to working on nearly 80 per cent of the Egyptian government’s IT contracts by 2011, Raya expanded operations to Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Poland, and the UAE and implemented core applications for numerous telecom providers, including Vodafone, Mobily, Etisalat, and Syriatel.
With no space for further investment in IT, Raya started diversifying into projects like recycling and fintech for rapid growth. Khalil discusses Raya’s successful IPO worth 400 million Egyptian pounds on the Egyptian Exchange in 2005. He discusses how diversification, international operations, and exportation helped Raya navigate macroeconomic and geopolitical turbulence, including the Arab Spring and currency devaluation. He further shares his views about the relationship between businesses and governments and how turbulence has impacted Raya's relationship with the Egyptian government.
Khalil then discusses how businesses impact society through job and value creation. He also explains his firm’s initiative to support women and sports, and his view that people management is the key to success, and how strategic planning is essential for a conglomerate’s success.
Khalil concludes the interview by emphasising the importance of taking risks to harness the vast opportunities for growth and success in emerging markets.
People management is the key to success. The manager's position is to do the job through people, so it's people management. You need to listen, you need to communicate, you need to train, educate, and delegate.
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Additional Resources
"Raya Holding For Financial Investments: delivering cutting-edge solutions and services in Egypt"
The Worldfolio , June 26, 2019.
Tamim Elyan, " Raya Plans IPO of Call Center Unit for Expansion Outside Egypt,"
Bloomberg , April 14, 2016.
Fatma Salah, dailynewsegypt.com , 6 February, 2022.
Chairman x CEO: Medhat Khalil & Ahmed Khalil on Leadership, Family, and Legacy, June 2, 2025.
Interview Citation Format
Interview with Medhat Khalil, interviewed by Andy Zelleke, Cairo, Egypt, 14 May 2025, Creating Emerging Markets Oral History Collection, Baker Library Special Collections and Archives, Harvard Business School, http://www.hbs.edu/creating-emerging-markets/.
