A new app aims to revolutionize banking for many Egyptians, providing an online-only experience. The banking startup, named Telda, officially launched in April 2021 after securing a USD 5 million pre-seed, the biggest of its kind in the region. The capital was largely funded by the American firm Sequoia Capital, in its first venture into the Middle East and North Africa market, but is no means the firm’s first investment in tech; it has previously backed household names like Apple, Google, Oracle, YouTube, Instagram and WhatsApp. Telda is the brainchild of Swvl’s co-founder and former CTO, Ahmed Sabbah and an ex-senior engineer at Uber, Youssef Sholqamy. The pair are bringing their background in application-based business to make further inroads into the blooming Egyptian tech sector. While the government still doesn’t award licenses to totally independent ‘neo banks’, Telda has bypassed the law by teaming up (while insisting it is totally independent of) with a local bank, which is yet to be revealed. Like its logo (a simple sine-wave) suggests, Telda hopes to make waves in Egypt, especially among the more technologically literate young, with Sabbah explicitly stating that: “Telda is…
