How Egypt’s MNT-Halan Went from Ride Hailing Roots to Becoming a Payment App Unicorn in 2023

MNT-Halan made headlines last February when it was named the first African unicorn of 2023. MNT-Halan currently bills itself as Egypt’s largest non-bank lender to the unbanked, but you might be surprised to learn that it originally debuted as a ride-hailing platform called Halan Inc.

Founded in 2017 by Mounir Nakhla and Ahmed Mohsen, MNT-Halan started as a passenger ride-hailing platform based in Zamalek, Giza, an affluent and diplomatic district of Cairo. The founders began building the ride-hailing platform after raising $2.5 million in a seed round between November 2017 and March 2018. It was followed by more rounds, starting with Halan’s Series A, which closed at $4.4 million in late 2018. An additional $15 million Series B funding round was unveiled in 2020. The merger came on the table in the second half of 2021 after a share swap with Dutch lender MNT Investments BV that appeared to involve $120 million in funding.

Halan Inc. thus officially became MNT-Halan, and its transformation and evolution into a digital payments and fintech player began in a hurry. The company expanded rapidly, embracing B2C and B2B on-demand logistics solutions in the first year after the merger, before entering food delivery and becoming a super app within two years. It expanded aggressively, in part by borrowing and raising $150 million in debt financing in June 2022. By the end of that year, the company had processed $1.8 billion in transactions, and monthly throughput had increased more than 20-fold over the past five years, surpassing $100 million.

Related: 10 Charts You Need to See to Understand Egypt’s Startup Ecosystem

Photo courtesy of Lucidity Insights.

MNT-Halan currently offers loans, buy now, pay later (BNPL), e-commerce and more through Halan Neuron payment processing software, as well as digital cards and wallets. In fact, MNT-Halan’s market share in SME lending was 9% in 2018, rising to 25% in 2022. The number of borrowers has increased more than 3-fold from 750,000 in 2021 to 2.5 million in 2022.

Fast forward to February 2023, when MNT-Halan raised $260 million in equity funding, partially provided by Abu Dhabi-based Chimera Investments, and an additional $140 million through two securitized bond issuances totaling $400 million at a valuation of $1 billion to achieve the coveted unicorn status. MNT-Halan now boasts 1.5 million monthly active users, 6 million customers, 4 million financial customers, and 2.5 million borrowers.

But as impressive as the company’s timeline is, perhaps its most compelling narrative is of a future where MNT-Halan’s technology pushes boundaries. CEO Nakhla envisions a future where financial services are accessible to all—a direction he alluded to during the company’s 2021 rebranding, when he said, “MNT-Halan will be a leading player in digitizing the unbanked and delivering financial services to millions of underserved consumers in the region.”

Today, MNT-Halan values ​​empowering underserved sectors, mitigating inequality, increasing women’s economic participation and supporting young people – all key aspects in a country where 70% of the population struggles with inadequate financial support.

For more information on the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Egypt, please read the report Investing in Egypt’s Startup Ecosystem, available here.

This article was originally published on the website of Lucidity Insights, Entrepreneur Middle East’s partner in producing special reports on technology and entrepreneurship ecosystems in the Middle East and Africa.

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