Former e& Group CEO Hatem Dowidar Invests in Tactful AI

Hatem Dowidar, former Group CEO of e&, has invested in Tactful AI, the company building the infrastructure for agentic customer experience. The investment is part of an extension of Tactful’s pre-Series A round. Terms were not disclosed.

Dowidar led e& as Group CEO from 2020 to March 2026, having joined the group in 2015 as Group Chief Operating Officer. Before that, he spent 16 years at Vodafone, including as CEO of Vodafone Egypt. He brings more than 25 years of experience in telecommunications and technology.

“Hatem Dowidar spent over 25 years leading major tech powerhouses serving millions of customers across the Middle East and Africa,” said Mohamed Elmasry, co-founder and CEO of Tactful AI. “Very few leaders share his depth of understanding and strategic clarity regarding what large enterprises require before trusting new, customer-facing technologies. His support and trust come at a pivotal moment as we take our boldest step yet toward defining a new era of agentic AI-driven customer experience.”

“Enterprises across the region are actively seeking practical, reliable solutions to integrate AI into their customer operations safely and at scale,” said Hatem Dowidar. “Tactful has successfully deployed this infrastructure in live production environments. Seeing the capabilities of their next-generation technology convinced me that this team has everything it takes to set the industry benchmark, both regionally and globally.”

Most AI in customer service today answers questions. Tactful’s next generation of technology tackles a harder problem: how a business builds, changes and improves its own customer experience. Changes that used to take months take hours, and a person approves every step.

This builds on a platform already running in production, bringing engagement, orchestration, governance, analytics, automation and agentic AI together in one place. Tactful will share more in the coming months.

Since January 2025, Tactful’s annual recurring revenue has grown 11.7x. Over the same period, the number of customer conversations the platform handles each month has grown 32x. Customers include Elaraby Group, Raneen, 2B, Lucky One, Erada Finance and Simplex.

The company plans to raise a Series A in 2027.