Amr Salem considers himself a “businessman in the tech industry.” As CEO and Board Member at Quantela, Amr uses his keen business ingenuity to help cities work more efficiently and sustainably. By harnessing data collected by the city, Quantela targets inefficiencies and reallocates underutilized assets. The effect is to help cities reduce energy consumption, increase revenue, improve traffic flow, and much more.

“I'm monetizing alternative assets to achieve the outcome the city wanted,” Amr says. “We find advertising assets are very monetizable. So we digitized them. We create platforms for online auctioning and ad bidding. We engage ad sales agencies with us, and we monetize the ad assets. We take the revenue, and then we use it to provide you with clean air, clean water, or save lives. Because you have assets that are not very well used, or we monetize some of the data you have in a purely macro way. And then from there, we drive revenue.”

In just his second year at Quantela, the company has come off a successful funding round in which it raised $40 million. Quantela made two acquisitions in the last three months and continues to work with governments and municipalities to make their cities smarter.

In this episode of Forge Ahead, Amr talks about the value of playing to your strengths, adapting successful ideas to your business, and putting your customer at the center of everything you do.

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