Nawy: Real Estate Personalized Recommendations and Services
Updated 8/29/2023 8:00:00 AM
Arab Finance: The real estate market in Egypt has played a significant role in the country's economy and has undergone various stages of development. Real estate is considered one of the best sectors for attracting investment and achieving profits. The market has experienced growth driven by the development of new cities and large-scale governmental infrastructure projects.
That is why Arab Finance interviewed Mostafa El-Beltagy, CEO of Nawy. He shared valuable insights into the inspiration behind the company and its unique offerings in the real estate market in Egypt.
NAWY offers a tech-based platform that covers every step of the client's real estate journey, from searching for a home to buying, selling, consulting, and investing in properties.
1-What inspired you to start Nawy Estate, and what sets it apart from other real estate companies in Egypt?
The decision to join Nawy as a founder and CEO was sparked by my return from working in South Africa and having surplus capital to invest. Being an Egyptian, real estate was my preferred asset class, prompting me to seek advice from my cousin, a seasoned professional in the industry. He recommended a specific development, and I sought to understand the rationale behind his choice. I inquired about the projected price trajectory, potential rental yields, and how the price per meter compared to competitors. Unfortunately, my cousin was unable to provide satisfactory answers, citing the difficulty of gathering accurate data. This realization highlighted a market gap, leading me and my co-founders to establish Nawy. Our mission is to empower customers with comprehensive information and sales support, enabling them to make informed investment decisions based on solid, accurate facts.
2-What are the main services that Nawy provides to its clients?
- A tech-based information and services platform (website and application) with multiple arms that tackle every step of our clients’ journey, from searching for a home to buying, selling, consulting, and/or investing in properties.
- A differentiated client-brokerage experience as a result of well-informed, transparent, and tech-enabled property consultants that deliver best-in-class consultation, backed by accurate and updated data.
- The ease with which customers can navigate, compare, and filter properties according to their preferences allows them significantly shorter search times via a seamless experience.
- Our skilled data analysts can transform the continuous influx of data into consolidated trends and clear market insights. This allows us to be able to provide our customers with unparalleled advice and support with the utmost transparency and accuracy.
3-Can you tell us about the £1 billion agreement that Nawy Estate signed to fund the "Move Now, Pay Later" service, and how this service benefits your customers?
The Nawy Now service (a.k.a., move now, pay later) is a financing option that not only allows you to choose your perfect home but also to move in immediately while setting up a flexible payment plan that suits you. Nawy handles all the paperwork, removing the hassle that usually comes with taking out loans and whatnot. In under 45 days, your new home will be available for you to move into, and that is not a service that is readily available in Egypt with that ease.
4-How do you ensure that your customers receive personalized recommendations, and what role do machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) play in this process?
Our services are what make us unique. The ML analyzes market trends from all the data points we collect on all developers; on top of that, we even feed it with market knowledge as well as qualitative metrics, and on the basis of all these inputs, client search results and recommendations are created to best suit the clients’ needs in the thousands of listings that we have.
Furthermore, our use of machine learning allows us to also match the right agent with the right client after analyzing their behavior, area of interest, geographical location from which they are contacting us, etc. We always try to match the most suitable agent to handle the client's needs.
5-Can you tell us about the areas in Egypt that are most profitable for Nawy Estate, and why?
New Cairo, 6th of October City, and the North Coast, and that is because of the significant growth and development that has taken place over the past few years. Numerous new residential compounds, commercial centers, and infrastructure projects are taking place simultaneously.
The North Coast is the summer go-to place for a huge percentage of the Egyptian population and has proven over the years to be a lucrative way for clients to receive a high return on investment (ROI) in comparison to the Red Sea. The price hikes in the North Coast year on year by far surpass most areas in Egypt and prove over and over again to be a smart way to invest one's capital.
6-Can you share with our reader Nawy’s last year's revenues and growth rate?
Gross merchandise value (GMV) increased from £0.5 billion in 2020 to £6.5 billion in 2022, and we forecast that we will grow the business by 3–4x in 2023.
Revenue grew from £14 million in 2020 to nearly £200 million in 2022 and is again expected to grow 3–4 times this year.
7-How do you plan to use the investment funding that Nawy Estate received in its two funding rounds?
First and foremost, we plan to focus on building and refining our core product, the Nawy platform (website and app), to ensure that we have a product that demonstrates the value and functionality Nawy offers.
Continue to build on our best-in-class team with expertise in technology, real estate, marketing, and other relevant domains. We also started establishing strong partnerships and alliances with key industry players, which allowed us to increase our reach and fast-track our growth.
Lastly, and most importantly, we will continue to expand our current product lines to address market needs such as Nawy Partners (focused on enabling other brokers and experts in the real estate sector), Nawy e-realty (focused on improving the buying experience and allowing for the transactions to happen fully online with the client and sales agent on a video call), and Nawy Shares (facilitating partial ownership in properties), in addition to expanding to other countries.
8- How do you see the development of the real estate sector in Egypt, especially with the recent increase of co-owned property companies and real estate companies?
Real estate companies, facilitated by technology, have created massive, ground-breaking opportunities that will reshape how people access and invest in real estate. The general top-view trend visible to me is the increased accessibility of real estate investments to a broader range of individuals who might not have the capacity to solely buy their properties. Investors can now diversify their investment portfolios by owning shares in different properties and locations. Moreover, buyers who are looking for second homes by the seaside (north coast and the Red Sea) can now also own properties that they would share with others to use, making homeownership more accessible. It will take a while for both of these products to mature and reach mass scale, but I expect this will happen in the coming years.
9-How has the current inflation in Egypt affected your business, and what measures have you taken to mitigate its impact?
The highly inflationary macroeconomic environment has made people want to store wealth in assets that will appreciate over time. Real estate is one of the leading asset classes that has historically hedged well against inflation. Buyers who are buying for the sake of using also want to buy now before they are possibly priced out of the market or forced to downgrade due to the fast pace of increases in the real estate market. These factors have actually contributed to growth in the real estate market, despite macroeconomic conditions becoming harsher overall.
At Nawy, we are very aware of the challenges faced by many individuals and businesses in light of the current economic situation. We want to focus on giving our customers the best recommendations and insights into the rapidly changing real estate market so they can make the best possible decisions.
10- Can you tell us about the plans of Nawy Estate and how you plan to expand your services and reach?
We are committed to a future of sustainable growth and innovation in the prop-tech space. Our vision is to expand our offerings and services to continuously disrupt the real estate ecosystem. We hope that using our technology and expertise will help improve the experience of real estate transactions for consumers, investors, businesses, developers, brokers, and everyone else involved in the ecosystem, which is an integral part of every real estate transaction in Egypt.
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