The startup was founded in 2000 by Egyptian techpreneur Amr Shady. TA telecom expanded from its headquarters in Egypt to Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Libya, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Rwanda, and Morocco.[1] It started as a mobile advertising provider and provided value-added services (VAS) a year later in 2001. Value-added services are phone services that users can receive in addition to their core voice calls (e.g., ring back tones, daily news summaries that are automatically sent to users by SMS, etc.).