Fawry, an Egyptian electronic payments company is now a unicorn after reaching a valuation of over $1 billion. With this, Fawry has become the first technology company in Egypt to get to the billion-dollar.
Its stock price has increased by over 300 percent since its debut at The Egyptian Exchange in August last year. It had gone public with its shares priced at $0.41 (EGP 6.46) per share.
The pandemic has created a surge in demand for electronic payment services and Fawry being the leading player in Egypt obviously has benefitted a lot from that – which is also evident from the company’s just-announced financials for the second quarter.
Its revenue for the first half of 2020 has increased by 47 percent (year-on-year) to $34.41 million from $23.38 million for the same period of 2019. The net profit of the company in H1 2020 has increased by over 135 percent YoY to $5.38 million from $2.29 in H1 2019.
Fawry that is the only technology company on The Egyptian Exchange currently offers over 250 electronic payment services through its network of over 105,000 service points across 300 cities in Egypt – that include ATMs, mobile wallets, retail shops, post offices, and little vendor kiosks.
Jumia, the eCommerce firm that prides itself as the ‘Amazon of Africa’ also hit unicorn status after it listed on the New York Stock Exchange. However, its share price has fallen since then and as such, it lost the tag.
With Fawry reaching unicorn status despite listing on the Egyptian Exchange, it will serve as a boost for many African startups who are deploying homegrown solutions to tackle many of Africa’s challenges just like Fawry is doing. Perhaps, someday, these companies will become million-dollar companies if not billion.
