Why are we suddenly seeing a surge in funding for Egyptian startups?

Over the past two years, Egypt has faced a perfect storm of macro challenges: sharp currency devaluation, investor flight, and prolonged uncertainty. Naturally, this throttled capital deployment across the board, especially from regional VCs in the GCC, many of whom shifted into portfolio defence mode and paused new exposure entirely.

With local capital scarce, startups in Egypt had little choice but to do the hard thing: grow revenue, prove product-market fit, and build in dollar terms, without a whole pile of help. That discipline is finally being rewarded. What we’re seeing now in many respects is a lagged wave of funding flowing to companies that weathered the storm. Balance sheets are cleaner. Unit economics are clearer. Conviction is returning.

You can see it in the cap table makeups. DPI’s Nclude fund has appeared across multiple post-Series A rounds. Partech, based in Paris, has led two deals. This isn’t spray-and-pray capital, it’s very much a targeted return of institutional and international investors who were sitting out Egypt’s downturn and are now re-engaging.

There’s another shift, too: the best Egyptian startups are no longer building just for Egypt. Many are now positioning themselves as regional players. Proptech player Nawy is expanding into the GCC. Investing platform Thndr has secured a license in ADGM and is also eyeing Saudi. ROSCA platform Money Fellows is looking westward toward Morocco and the Maghreb.

What’s more, they’re in the “right” sectors. Fintech and proptech are two of the few verticals regional VCs are most bullish on, along with AI. But what makes these Egyptian players stand out in particular is that they’re solving deep, native problems, not just copying and pasting Western models.

• Money Fellows is digitising gameya-style informal savings.

• Nawy is tackling Egypt’s dysfunctional mortgage and housing finance market.

• Sylndr is fixing vehicle resale inefficiencies in a low-trust, high-friction environment.

All of this makes for a compelling combination: local resilience, sectoral momentum, and credible regional expansion. And, in short, that’s why capital is flowing again.