For decades, the purchase of ownership in Egypt entailed the navigation of a fragmented real estate market, relying on personal networks, dealing with brokers led by the commissions and dealing with the developers most focused on the sale compared to customer needs.
In 2019, Mostafa El Beltagy, Abdel-Azim Osman, Ahmed Rafea, Mohamed Abou Ghanaima and Aly Rafaa founded Nawy to bring transparency and efficiency to the market. Now positioning himself as the largest African proper platform, Nawy has collected $ 52 million in funding in Serie A, led by the VC company focused on Africa Partach Africa, validating its model of combination of properties of ownership with intermediation services.
The Serie A round, which also includes $ 23 million debt funding from the best Egyptian banks, brings the total to $ 75 million, one of the largest Serie A rounds for an African startup.
The journey of the co-founder and CEO El Beltagy in Proptech began as a personal frustration. After several years working in company works in several countries, he wanted to invest in properties in Egypt, a market that many people consider coverage against the inflation and devaluation of the currency.
However, while navigating in the property purchase process, the lack of transparency and the prevalence of distorted advice became obvious problems.
“I had no way of looking at the market and understanding what’s out there, in addition to going almost developer by the developer, collecting their brochures and asking questions to their sellers, which was highly inefficient,” said CEO. “In this sector, everyone is incentivized to push you in one way or another.”
These challenges led El Beltagy to build Nawy to help people buy, sell, invest, finance and manage the property. Its model, which combines a real estate quotation platform with intermediation services, has distinguished it in a sector still dominated by agents with rooted and offline relationships.
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Initially, Nawy has fought to protect these lists. The developers were skeptical on Nawy’s value because they were not large enough to drive traffic towards their lists. The brokers, on the other hand, saw Nawy as a competitor.
To build trust, Nawy introduced payment of immediate commissions, financed in advance of the brokers who made their first transaction on the platform. This movement moved, leading to a growth of word of mouth that has seen over 3,000 brokers actively using partners Nawy (its product for brokers), accessing live inventory and flexible payments.
In addition, the prophetech based in Cairo attracts over a million monthly visitors, with hundreds of developers competing for visibility. About 150 developers cover most of the new Build market in Egypt, which is worth about $ 30 billion, based on 100,000 transactions per year, according to El Beltagy.
In recent years, Nawy has extended beyond the lists and intermediation services, evolving into a complete stack real estate ecosystem. This includes Nawy shares, a fractional property product that allows users to invest in ownership with at least $ 500, making the real estate sector accessible to the medium Egyptian income population, which has long been assessed.
In addition, Nawy has developed a mortgage product, “Move now later”, designed to allow users to buy through plans of installments and financing options in a market where banks rarely offer loans for real estate purchases.
“The real estate market is very lops in the sense that most people buy a new build, not resold. We believe that enabled this product will cause some turn,” said El Bellagy. “It is a mortgage in a different way because mortgages are almost non -existent here.” He added that the $ 23 million Nawy debt structure supports this offer.
Immune to economic volatility?
These products have diversified Nawy’s revenue flows, which the company claims to have grown more than 50 times in terms of dollars in the last four years, despite the Egyptian pound loses 69% of its value.
El Beltagy attributes much of this growth to the demand for market properties as a coverage against the inflation and devaluation of the currency. While the currency crisis has an impact on local demand, the influx of expatriate money has contributed to compensating for the drop.
As a result, Nawy closed 2024 with over $ 1.4 billion in gross goods value (GMV), compared to $ 38 million in 2020.
With the new capital, Nawy plans to expand beyond Egypt in North Africa and the Middle East, the regions that emerge rapidly as some of the most promising real estate markets in the world. Nawy is targeting Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as its next markets (in the United Arab Emirates, for example, platforms such as Huspy and Property Finder already have a strong traction.)
El Beltagy mentions that the company will acquire smaller companies along the way. Recently, he acquired the Roa property management startup and renamed him as “unlocked Nawy”, expanding his products of products.
The Serie A round, raised in two tranches, will finance these plans, including the progress of product development and the integration of the AI in the processes of Nawy, according to El Beltagy.
Other important investors who participate in the round include the Ncludo Fund of Development Partners International, E & Capital, Endeavor Catalyst, Hof Capital, March Capital Investments, Outlier, Plug and Play, Shorooq Partners, Venturesouq and Verad-Kepple Africa Ventures.
“We are excited to support Nawy as they build the foundations for a modern real estate experience and guided by technology,” said Tidjane Deme, partach general partner. “Their team has insights on the market, combined with ambitious regional expansion plans and exceptional execution, positioning them as the clear Proptech champion in Africa and the Middle East.”
