We’ve all been through the unfortunate situation where we desperately needed to use the bathroom, but unluckily got stuck in traffic or had to drive to a long-distance destination.
Naturally, when I heard about Maznoq, I cried tears of joy. The mobile application is an ingenious creation, providing users with the most accessible toilets within their reach. This includes public toilets — whether in mosques, the streets or toilets in branded places like restaurants or cafes.
Luckily, I had the pleasure to meet with the CEO of my new favorite business, Ahmed Ali, who gave me an exciting peek into the upcoming app. Ali is a website and mobile application designer, who used to work abroad for quite some time — mainly in the Gulf region. But ever since Maznoq came into being, he has been occupied with a group of talented programmers in Egypt, to put his skills — along with theirs — into practice.
Ali told me that the application is not only about setting out places where one can find toilets. “That wouldn’t be so clever,” he said sarcastically. “The thing about Maznoq is that it gives you comprehensive information on the toilets around your area; their cleanliness based on other people’s ratings and the services they include.”
“I have tried all types of toilets in Egypt, from public toilets (completely disastrous and unfit for human-use), gas stations toilets and more. My knowledge of toilets, had to be transmitted to the masses.”
A screenshot from the Maznoq website — Via Maznoq
Maznoq was, of course, the byproduct of a zan2a moment. Ali recounts, “The whole idea popped up when some of my co-workers and I were visiting a company and two of us really, like really, wanted to use the bathroom. But the bathrooms that were available to us at the time were all very busy. We kept searching for toilets around the area, but luck was not on our side. The second incident happened with me and my friends in Alexandria, where again, one of our friends really needed the toilet, but this one had to live with it for a whole hour until we found him a proper bathroom. Right at this moment, I thought something had to be done. It’s 2018 and we still run around like crazy to find toilets. Maznoq, it is!”
Because the idea of Maznoq is quite a new one to our society, Ali believed that it might be met with acceptance, rejection or maybe mockery. In all cases, he thinks that the most important thing for this project to kick off is to focus on the project itself and try to make use of all the criticism that he’ll be encountering.
Ali revealed that in the beginning, the focus will be on major cities such as Cairo and Alexandria, then probably expand to other cities as well. Stay tuned as I update you on when it launches or subscribe to their page so you can get notified upon it’s available to the masses.
