For decades, buying property in Egypt meant navigating a fragmented real estate market, relying on personal networks, dealing with commission-driven brokers, and facing developers more focused on selling than serving customer needs.

In 2019, Mostafa El Beltagy co-founded Nawy to bring transparency and efficiency to the market. Now positioning itself as Africa’s largest proptech platform, Nawy has raised $52 million in Series A funding, led by Africa-focused VC firm Partech Africa, validating its model of combining property listings with brokerage services.

The round, which also includes $23 million in debt financing from Egypt’s top banks, brings the total to $75 million, one of the largest Series As for an African startup. In 2022, it raised a $5 million seed round led by Egypt’s wealthiest family, the Sawiris.

CEO El Beltagy’s journey into proptech began with personal frustration. After several years working in corporate jobs across multiple countries, the former Vodafone executive wanted to invest in real estate in Egypt, a market many people view as a hedge against inflation and currency devaluation.

However, as he navigated the process of purchasing property, the lack of transparency and the prevalence of biased advice became glaring problems.

“I had no way to look at the market and understand what’s out there, aside from going almost developer by developer, picking up their brochures and asking their salespeople questions, which was highly inefficient,” the CEO recounted. “In this sector, everyone is incentivized to push you one way or another.”

These challenges led El-Beltagy to build Nawy to help people buy, sell, invest in, finance, and manage property. Its model, combining a property listing platform with brokerage services, has set it apart in an industry still dominated by agents with entrenched, offline relationships. The chief executive launched the company alongside Abdel-Azim Osman, Ahmed Rafea, Mohamed Abou Ghanima and Aly Rafea.

Making real estate accessible

At first, Nawy struggled to secure those listings. Developers were skeptical about Nawy’s value because it wasn’t big enough to drive traffic to their listings. Brokers, on the other hand, saw Nawy as a competitor.

To build trust, Nawy introduced immediate commission payments, funded upfront, to brokers who made their first transaction on the platform. This shifted sentiment, leading to word-of-mouth growth that has seen over 3,000 brokerages actively using Nawy Partners (its product for brokers), accessing live inventory and flexible payouts.

Additionally, the Cairo-based proptech attracts over a million monthly visitors, with hundreds of developers competing for visibility. About 150 developers cover most of Egypt’s new build market, which is worth around $30 billion, based on 100,000 transactions annually, according to El Beltagy.

Over the last few years, Nawy has expanded beyond listings and brokerage services, evolving into a full-stack real estate ecosystem. This includes Nawy Shares, a fractional ownership product that lets users invest in property with at least $500, making real estate accessible to Egypt’s middle-income population, which has long been priced out.

Additionally, Nawy has developed a mortgage product, “Move Now Pay Later,” designed to allow users to buy through installment plans and financing options in a market where banks rarely offer loans for real estate purchases.

“The real estate market is very lopsided in the sense that most people are buying new build, not resale. We believe enabling this product will cause a bit of a shift,” El Beltagy said of the embedded finance product. “It’s mortgage packaged differently because mortgages are almost non-existent here.” He added that Nawy’s $23 million debt facility backs this offering.

Whoop has backed down, somewhat, from the controversial upgrade plans around its Whoop 5.0 fitness tracker.

When the company first announced Whoop 5.0 this week, it said members who wanted the new device could either extend their subscriptions by 12 months or pay a one-time upgrade fee of $49 ($79 for the model with EKG sensors).

This seemed inconsistent with Whoop’s overall value proposition, where it charges higher subscription prices (ranging $199 to $359 a year) while allowing customers to upgrade their hardware for free. More specifically, it seemed to contradict a statement on the company’s website promising users free hardware upgrades if they’ve been members for at least six months.

After customers began complaining, the company responded with a Reddit post both announcing a more expansive upgrade policy and claiming to clarify its overall approach.

Now, anyone with more than 12 months remaining on their subscription is eligible for a free upgrade to Whoop 5.0 (or a refund if they’ve already paid the fee). And customers with less than 12 months can extend their subscription to get the upgrade at no additional cost.

While the company said it’s making these changes because it “heard your feedback,” it also suggested that its apparent stinginess was tied to its transition from a model focused on monthly or six-month subscription plans to one where it only offers 12- and 24-month subscriptions.

“We also want to acknowledge that a previous blog article incorrectly stated that anyone who had been a member for just 6 months would receive a free upgrade,” the company said. “This was never our policy and should never have been posted.”

There’s been a mixed response to these changes on the Whoop subreddit, with one moderator describing it as a “win for the community.” Other posters were more skeptical, with one writing, “You don’t publish a policy by accident and keep it up for years. Removing it after backlash doesn’t erase the fact [that] it is real.”

There were also a number of complaints from users who said they had 11 months left on their subscriptions, so they just missed the free upgrade cutoff.

Welcome back to Week in Review! We’ve got lots of news for you this week: There were CEO shake-ups at Instacart and 11x; the web series is back — kind of; Threads is getting video ads; and much more. Let’s get to it!

Big move: Instacart CEO Fidji Simo will become OpenAI’s CEO for Applications, the company said this week. Simo is already on the OpenAI board. She’ll be tasked with helping OpenAI in scaling “traditional” company functions, CEO Sam Altman said, but he didn’t provide any details on what that means.

Speaking of OpenAI: The company decided that its nonprofit division will retain control over its for-profit organization after initially announcing that it planned to convert to a for-profit organization. OpenAI says that it made the decision “after hearing from civic leaders and engaging in constructive dialogue with the offices of the Attorney General of Delaware and the Attorney General of California.”

And speaking of CEO moves: 11x CEO Hasan Sukkar announced that he’s stepping down and moving into a “non-executive chairman” position. In March, TechCrunch reported that 11x had been showing off on its website customer logos of companies that were not active customers, and one of those companies was threatening to sue over the matter.

This is TechCrunch’s Week in Review, where we recap the week’s biggest news. Want this delivered as a newsletter to your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here.

News

Trademark friction: Tesla wants to trademark the terms “Cybercab” and “Robotaxi” but was denied by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office because the terms are too generic. Tesla has three months to file a response, or the office will abandon the application. 

No thanks: Speaking onstage at Stripe’s annual Sessions conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg laid out his plans to automate the entire ad industry with a black-box, end-to-end AI ad tool. As Maxwell Zeff reports, “It’s an open question as to what AI ad testing will do to Meta’s platforms from a user experience point of view, considering they’re already brimming with generative AI slop.”

And speaking of ads: Meta announced at the NewFronts conference that it’s testing video ads in Threads. The update follows Meta’s recent announcement that Threads now reaches over 350 million monthly active users.

Yes, please! I’m not too savvy in the kitchen, so Posha’s new robot that cooks your meals for you sounds like a dream come true. You scroll through a list of recipes, select the one you want, add the proper amounts of the requested ingredients, and the machine makes the meal from there.

We’re back, baby: Before the rise of vertical video, scripted web series on YouTube were successful enough to spin out into cult-favorite TV shows like “Broad City,” “Insecure,” and “Letterkenny.” Now the web series is back, but it lives on a new platform: TikTok. 

Goodbye to a real one: Bill Gates said Thursday that the Gates Foundation will have just 20 years to exhaust its coffers and wind down operations. He has pledged to donate 99% of his fortune, which today is worth an estimated $107 billion, to the foundation.

Analysis

What’s next for OpenAI: OpenAI’s new restructuring plan could satisfy regulators and investors who have invested heavily in the company hoping for future profits. But it might also disrupt OpenAI’s future ambitions, especially regarding a potential IPO.