For many years, shopping for property in Egypt meant navigating a fragmented actual property market, counting on private networks, coping with commission-driven brokers, and dealing with builders extra targeted on promoting than serving buyer wants.
In 2019, Mostafa El Beltagy, Abdel-Azim Osman, Ahmed Rafea, Mohamed Abou Ghanima, and Aly Rafea based Nawy to carry transparency and effectivity to the market. Now positioning itself as Africa’s largest proptech platform, Nawy has raised $52 million in Collection A funding, led by Africa-focused VC agency Partech Africa, validating its mannequin of mixing property listings with brokerage providers.
The Collection A spherical, which additionally consists of $23 million in debt financing from Egypt’s prime banks, brings the full to $75 million, one of many largest Collection A rounds for an African startup.
Co-founder and CEO El Beltagy’s journey into proptech began as a private frustration. After a number of years working in company jobs throughout a number of international locations, he wished to spend money on actual property in Egypt, a market that many individuals view as a hedge towards inflation and foreign money devaluation.
Nevertheless, as he navigated the method of buying property, the dearth of transparency and the prevalence of biased recommendation grew to become obtrusive issues.
“I had no method to take a look at the market and perceive what’s on the market, other than going nearly developer by developer, choosing up their brochures and asking their salespeople questions, which was extremely inefficient,” the CEO recounted. “On this sector, everyone seems to be incentivized to push you a method or one other.”
These challenges led El Beltagy to construct Nawy to assist folks purchase, promote, spend money on, finance, and handle property. Its mannequin, combining a property itemizing platform with brokerage providers, has set it aside in an business nonetheless dominated by brokers with entrenched, offline relationships.
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Making actual property accessible
At first, Nawy struggled to safe these listings. Builders have been skeptical about Nawy’s worth as a result of they weren’t sufficiently big to drive visitors to their listings. Brokers, alternatively, noticed Nawy as a competitor.
To construct belief, Nawy launched fast fee funds, funded upfront, to brokers who made their first transaction on the platform. This shifted sentiment, resulting in word-of-mouth development that has seen over 3,000 brokerages actively utilizing Nawy Companions (its product for brokers), accessing reside stock and versatile payouts.
Moreover, the Cairo-based proptech attracts over one million month-to-month guests, with a whole bunch of builders competing for visibility. About 150 builders cowl most of Egypt’s new construct market, which is value round $30 billion, primarily based on 100,000 transactions yearly, in line with El Beltagy.
Over the previous couple of years, Nawy has expanded past listings and brokerage providers, evolving right into a full-stack actual property ecosystem. This consists of Nawy Shares, a fractional possession product that lets customers spend money on property with at the least $500, making actual property accessible to Egypt’s middle-income inhabitants, which has lengthy been priced out.
Moreover, Nawy has developed a mortgage product, “Transfer Now Pay Later,” designed to permit customers to purchase by way of installment plans and financing choices in a market the place banks not often supply loans for actual property purchases.
“The actual property market may be very lopsided within the sense that most individuals are shopping for new construct, not resale. We consider enabling this product will trigger a little bit of a shift,” El Beltagy stated. “It’s mortgage packaged in another way as a result of mortgages are nearly non-existent right here.” He added that Nawy’s $23 million debt facility backs this providing.
Proof against financial volatility?
These merchandise have diversified Nawy’s income streams, which the corporate claims to have grown greater than 50x in greenback phrases during the last 4 years, regardless of the Egyptian pound dropping 69% of its worth.
El Beltagy attributes a lot of this development to the market’s demand for actual property as a hedge towards inflation and foreign money devaluation. Whereas the foreign money disaster did impression native demand, the inflow of expatriate cash helped offset the drop.
Because of this, Nawy closed 2024 with over $1.4 billion in gross merchandise worth (GMV), up from $38 million in 2020.
With recent capital, Nawy plans to develop past Egypt into North Africa and the Center East, areas quickly rising as among the world’s most promising actual property markets. Nawy is focusing on Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE as its subsequent markets (within the UAE as an illustration, platforms like Huspy and Property Finder have already got robust traction.)
El Beltagy mentions that the corporate will purchase smaller firms alongside the way in which. Just lately, it acquired the property administration startup ROA and rebranded it as “Nawy Unlocked,” increasing its product choices.
The Collection A spherical, raised throughout two tranches, will fund these plans, together with advancing product growth and integrating AI throughout Nawy’s processes, in line with El Beltagy.
Different notable buyers collaborating within the spherical embrace Growth Companions Worldwide’s Nclude Fund, e& Capital, Endeavor Catalyst, HOF Capital, March Capital Investments, Outliers, Plug and Play, Shorooq Companions, VentureSouq, and Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures.
“We’re excited to assist Nawy as they construct the muse for a contemporary, tech-driven actual property expertise,” stated Tidjane Deme, common companion at Partech. “Their workforce has deep market insights, coupled with bold regional growth plans and distinctive execution, positioning them because the clear proptech champion in Africa and the Center East.”
