Nearshore or offshore: where Egypt fits for European companies

Nearshoring means working with people in a nearby country, with similar hours and easy travel; offshoring means working with people further away, usually for cost or talent. For companies in Europe, Egypt is an unusual case: offshore on the map, but Cairo is one hour ahead of Central Europe and two hours ahead of the UK for most of the year, so the working day overlaps almost completely.

What each model is usually chosen for

• Nearshore: close collaboration, shared working hours, similar business culture, easy visits.
• Offshore: a larger talent pool, lower cost, or skills and languages that are hard to find at home.
• Onshore: when the work has to be on site, or regulation requires it.

What matters more than the label

• Overlap in working hours, so questions are answered the same day.
• Language: your team’s working language and, for customer-facing roles, your customers’ languages.
• How the people are integrated: inside your team, or behind a vendor.
• Who handles employment, equipment, HR and data protection.
• How you see the work: reporting, reviews and access to the same tools.

Where Egypt fits

Egypt combines a large pool of graduates, many of them multilingual, with an established outsourcing industry and working hours that overlap with Europe and the Gulf. English is widely used in business. That makes it a strong option for roles that need daily collaboration, such as customer service, marketing, business development and software development, rather than only work handed over at the end of the day.

Questions to settle before you choose

1. 01Which roles need to talk to your team or your customers in real time?
2. 02Which languages does each role need?
3. 03Who will manage the people day to day?
4. 04Do you want a vendor to deliver an output, or people who work inside your team?
5. 05Who is the legal employer, and who handles equipment and data protection?

How GrowAxis does it

GrowAxis has an office in Cairo. Its embedded teams place dedicated experts based in Egypt inside your team: software developers, digital marketers, business developers and customer service specialists. GrowAxis employs and equips them and handles payroll, HR, performance reviews and reporting; you direct the work.