Egyptian Transport-tech Startup Halan Plans Expansion to Ethiopia

Halan, an Egyptian rickshaw and motorcycle ride hailing startup announces that operations will begin in Ethiopia before the end of the year. The startup targets underserved communities with below average street infrastructure and allows customers to request rides or order food or goods for delivery via motorbikes or tricycles commonly known as ‘tuk-tuk.’

Established in November 2017, it already operates in around 20 to 25 cities in Egypt and Sudan, with plans to further expand to the Egyptian governorates of Sharqeya, Damietta, Qena, Gharbeya and Daqahleya.

“Halan completes a few million rides per month, with almost half of them are in food deliveries,” says Mounir Nakhla, CEO and founder, to Reuters. “In this year only, ride-hailing trips increased 55% and food deliveries quadrupled,” adds Nakhla.

When explaining the importance behind the purpose to expand to Ethopia, Nakhla who has a background in microfinance, hopes Halan will become a ‘pan-African’ startup as he cites the tremendous opportunity for the growth on the continent as inspiration.

“Adama is a very small place in Ethiopia, not too far from the capital of Addis Ababa, and it has a lot of two and three-wheelers, which is why it’s a great place to test our product in Ethiopia. We’ve already done tens of rides in the form of testing, and got a team onboard,” explains Nakhla.

The city has below 1,000 vehicles whose drivers will be recruited by Halan to its platform before launching throughout the country. In an attempt to make ends meet, the application has a total of around 10,000 active drivers per month, and Egypt has around 700,000 tuk-tuks on the streets which can benefit from the opportunities the platform provides in terms of employment.

Moreover, Halan is the midst of a Series B funding round as declared by Nakhla, without disclosing a specific timeline or targeted amount, however, Nakhla states that the startup has gained slightly less than $20 million to date in funding and currently has over 100 employees in their corporate offices in Cairo.