Omar Effendi - MBA 3.29

The first store in this chain was established in 1856 by a Hungarian businessman named Orosdi. It stood in the same historic six-floor building on Abdel-Aziz Street in downtown Cairo where it remains today. Orosdi established other similar stores in Baghdad, Beirut and Istanbul and now boasts 82 branches and 68 warehouses. The stores were the first retail megastores of their kind in the Middle East and were called Orosdi-Bak since they were developed with the help of the Bak family. In 1920, the branches were sold to a businessman who changed the name of the stores from Orosdi-Bak to Omar Effendi. Then, in 1957, under Gamal Abdel Nasser’s presidency, and along with several other major assets including the infamous Suez Canal (nationalized in ’56), the Omar Effendi stores were nationalized.