Friday March 29th, 2024
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Egyptian Tuk-Tuk Start-Up ‘Halan’ to Expand to Ethiopia

Not the first Egyptian start-up to start expanding Pan-African...

Staff Writer

Egyptian Tuk-Tuk Start-Up ‘Halan’ to Expand to Ethiopia

Halan, an Egyptian technology start-up that uses two- and three-wheeled vehicles to transport commuters and goods, will move and start operating in Ethiopia later this year.

Targeting under-served communities, CEO and Founder Mounir Nakhla said that, this year, they will also be expanding into more Egyptian governorates, including Sharqeya, Daqahleya, Damietta, Qena and Gharbeya. The company already operates in around 25 cities in Egypt and Sudan combined.

Founded in November of 2017, Halan works through a mobile application that allows customers to request motorbike and tuk-tuk rides and to order food or goods to be delivered to them by motorbike or cargo tricycle. “Halan completes a few million rides per month, almost half a million of which are in food deliveries,” Nakhla said, adding that ride-hailing trips have increased by 55%, with food deliveries more than quadrupling this year. Halan, which has partnerships with major fast food chains in Egypt like KFC, McDonald's and Pizza Hut, is now focusing on smaller local restaurants for the under-served communities they're targeting. 

“Adama is a very small place in Ethiopia, about 150 km from Addis Ababa, and it has a lot of two-wheelers and three-wheelers,” Nakhla said. “It’s a great place to test our product in Ethiopia. We’ve already done tens of test rides there, and we’ve got a team on board.”

While there are around 10,000 total active Halan drivers per month, there are 700,000 tuk-tuks running on Egypt’s streets.