A one-person Cairo bus navigation app: two TikToks brought 10k installs, but the street is already crowded

Cairo's transport runs on microbuses, which have no stops, no timetables and no official data, and are largely absent from Google Maps. An indie developer named AMOdev built "طريقي" (Tareqi, meaning "my way"): tap where you want to go on the map, and it tells you which microbus to take first and where to transfer to the metro. Two and a half months after launch it had 25k installs, and both spikes line up with posts and videos the developer published. Below: why it took off, why it's a losing business in Cairo, and where this playbook could travel.

A post in a "how do I get there" group

2026 Aug 24 at 4:22 a.m., a local Cairo Facebook group called "ازاي اروح شكرا" ("how do I get there, thanks") had people asking "which bus from A to B" every day. An account called "Tareqi/طريقي" posted this in the group:

Thank God, "طريقي" is live. If you don't know what it is, it can take you from anywhere in greater Cairo to anywhere else by public transport: tell it where you are and where you're going, and it tells you what to take and where to get on... Take a look and tell me what you think.

The post got 25 reactions and 4 comments. On Sep 8 he posted an update in the same group: added comments, fares, route suggestions, and tuk-tuks.

This was its first user source: no hunting for users, just going to where users ask directions every day and answering their questions.

What it actually is

The Google Play store page is very colloquial (Egyptian dialect): "Where do you want to go? You don't need to know the station names. Whether it's home, a clinic, a university or a café, just tell it." Routes can mix metro, monorail, light rail (LRT), buses, minibuses and microbuses, plus walking, and tell you where to get off and transfer; you can look up a bus line by number to see what it passes; and tapping "start trip" gives you an alert as you near your stop.

A few details show the developer knows his users well:

• Offline: the map downloads at about 107MB once, after which it "works in metro tunnels, even with no phone credit." Many people in Egypt use low-end Android phones and pay-as-you-go data.
• No account: no name, no phone number, no tracking tools.
• Honest about where the data comes from: metro, monorail and light-rail data comes from public information published by the transport ministry and metro operator; "bus and microbus routes have no official source, our data comes from field observation and passenger contributions, and should be treated as a reference only." Before boarding, "ask the driver."

Free: no ads, no in-app purchases (Google Play, 11-06). The privacy policy previews that "after every few searches a Google ad may appear." The Egypt store page has a rating of 4.8 stars from 78 reviews.

Install curve: two spikes, flat in between

The September figure is a third-party estimate; the November figure is the Google Play install count (11-06). No direct evidence was found for which post or share triggered the first spike; timing puts it after the group post and before the TikTok account opened (Sep 6), so the most likely explanation (inferred) is that a large group or account shared it.

It ranked around #100 in map-category free charts in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Small category charts like these have a low bar, so this is probably Egyptians working in the Gulf installing it (inferred); its ranking in Egypt was not checked.

The second spike came from two TikToks

Starting in September, the developer opened the TikTok account @tareqi2 and posted almost daily, with copy that boiled down to one line:

The first app that can take you from anywhere in Cairo to anywhere else by public transport.

Elsewhere he put it more bluntly: "Used the same way as Uber or inDrive, except it's for buses."

For the first month and a half, the videos got about a thousand views each, with single-digit likes (10-18 one video 1,259 views, 5 likes; 10-20 one video 1,288 views, 3 likes). Then:

• 10-26: 87,028 views, 5,085 likes, 908 shares. The caption only said "the link is in my profile, go download it, and don't forget to follow and like."
• 10-31: 78,925 views, 3,404 likes. The caption was an apology: "The map in the previous video had errors and has been fixed. The mistakes weren't intentional; the images were made with AI, so errors happen. Thanks to everyone who pointed them out."
• 11-01: 8,172 views; 11-04: 7,189 views (TikTok, 11-06).

Two hit videos in a row, and then 11-01 to 11-03 brought +10k installs. One counterexample is worth noting: in Oct 5, a video with 116k views got only 98 likes and the install curve didn't move at all. Possibly it landed in a low-quality traffic pool or was boosted (unverified). Views don't equal downloads; likes and shares are what matter.

He also posted the same video to YouTube Shorts and his Facebook page. I found no media coverage, no discussion on X, and no ads (I can only say I didn't find any). The account currently has only 5,000-some followers.

Why this one, and why now

The demand is old. On Reddit's Egypt communities, people have been asking for years whether there's a reliable bus app, and the answer has always been "no, just use Google Maps." Google Maps added official bus operator routes at the end of 2018, but only the formal lines. The microbuses that carry most of Cairo's commuters have never had public data. Since 2015, an NGO called Transport for Cairo has mapped informal routes, but only as data and maps, not as a consumer app.

Tareqi took off not because it built something others couldn't, but because three things stacked up:

1. Answering where users are asking questions: in the "how do I get from here to there" groups, people ask for routes, and its posts are the answer.
2. A one-line pitch: "Like Uber, but tap the map for buses." Anyone scrolling gets it in a second.
3. Sticky once installed: offline, no account required, 4.8 stars. The September update let users report fares and routes, turning users into data collectors. That's the only place it could build a real moat.

Who's competing: in 2026, a bunch of identical apps suddenly appeared in Cairo.

This section decides whether you should follow.

An earlier generation (أركب إيه, وصلني, على جنب, 2016 to 2019) built microbus route libraries but fell behind; a Facebook page called "خطوط مواصلات" (transport routes) has 210k followers.

In other words, Cairo isn't an empty market. It's a race to see who gets microbus data usable first and who pulls people in first. Tareqi has 25k installs and is ahead of every new player except the veteran metro app and the official app, but Sekka is twice its size and got media first.

Where the money comes from: not yet, and probably not much later

It charges nothing right now. The only revenue idea is ads (which it has announced itself), and ad rates for Android users in Egypt are low. A commuter tool opened twice a day would bring in roughly a few hundred to a thousand-odd dollars a month (estimate). There's a regional acquisition precedent: in 2021, an Egyptian company also called Tareeqi was acquired by Oman's eMushrif, but that was a different product. It only shows such things can get bought, not that they earn on their own.

So the real value of this product: one person, zero budget, 25k city commuters in two and a half months. What's valuable is that user base and the crowdsourced route data, not the app itself.

If it were you

A verdict: following it in Cairo isn't worth it. Over a dozen have already launched, Sekka is ahead, and the business barely makes money. What's worth learning is its playbook, which can be transplanted to another city that relies on informal transport with no one doing clean data.

Who it suits: someone who lives in such a city and rides these vehicles every day, ideally speaks the local language, is willing to spend weeks mapping routes on the ground, and is willing to film and post short videos daily. Treat it as a project for building users, reputation, and data, or as a bargaining chip for a future acquisition by a local mobility or payments company.

Who it doesn't suit: anyone not local, trying to scrape data remotely (there's no official data to scrape; routes have to be mapped on foot and reported by riders); anyone expecting the app itself to earn money (only low-rate ads); anyone wanting to build another one in Cairo (already crowded).

How to do it: pick a city where minibuses, jeepneys, or matatus run everywhere, like Amman, Lagos, Nairobi, Manila, or Lima. (First check in the stores and on TikTok whether someone has already done it well.) Import formal lines (metro, bus rapid transit) from official open data, then get the hottest few dozen informal routes working first. Offline maps, no account, and a visible note saying "unofficial, ask the driver before boarding." Make "report an error" and "suggest a new route" part of the first version so users fill in the data for you.

How to get users: follow Tareqi's two-step approach. First, find local "how do I get to X" Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram groups, post as the developer, ask for feedback, and reply often. Second, run a TikTok account with daily posts, with a one-line hook: "Like Uber, but tap the map for buses." Show real routes on screen, not AI-generated maps (Tareqi got burned for that and had to post an apology video). Tareqi's posts got around a thousand views for almost a month and a half before a single one took off around day 50. Watch likes and shares; high views with low likes don't count.

Before it's too late: The earlier the better. In 2026 a dozen-plus Cairo apps appeared, showing that "one person builds a local transit app with AI-written code" is now so easy that anyone can do it. The city you pick will probably have its own Sekka within a year or two. Whoever ships first and holds the local commuter groups wins.

Signs you've misjudged it: (1) Tareqi has no new viral videos for the next month and installs drop back to dozens a day, meaning it failed to retain people and the two spikes were one-off curiosity. (2) Google Maps or Moovit adds Cairo's microbuses, meaning big companies fill these cities in themselves and the indie window closes. (3) Searching the store for your chosen city's local language plus "bus" turns up an app with tens of thousands of installs and a rating above 4 stars. If so, don't go there.