Dawar Acquires Fellow Egyptian Startup BekyaPay To Expand Its Digital Waste Management Ecosystem

Dawar, a Cairo-based circular economy platform, has acquired a strategic stake in fellow Egyptian startup BekyaPay, an Alexandria-based consumer application that allows households to exchange sorted recyclables for cash. 

Co-founded by Amr Fathi, Mostafa Khairat, and Hussein Barrada in Egypt in 2017, Dawar formalizes fragmented waste recovery systems by serving as a digital infrastructure that tracks and verifies the movement of recyclables across collection points, aggregators, and traders. Meanwhile, BekyaPay, which was founded in 2024 by Omar Saleh, Mohamed Hamdy, and Mohamed Ibrahim, links over 30,000 users to an efficient recycling network through the use of 500 collection points and 120 collectors across two governorates in the country.  

The acquisition expands Dawar’s reach to the point-of-waste generation, allowing it to capture source-level data and boost traceability across the recycling chain. By improving early-stage data visibility, it helps meet tightening extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulations and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting requirements. Speaking to Inc. Arabia, Fathi, who's the CEO of Dawar, shared that, rather than operating as a traditional recycler, the company is building a digital waste management ecosystem in Egypt. Central to its proposition, he noted, is its role in bridging the formal and informal waste economies. 

“While waste recovery has long existed in Egypt, it historically lacked the data, governance, and value-chain visibility necessary to maximize efficiency and ensure regulatory compliance,” Fathi said. “To solve this, we built Dawar as a dedicated digital infrastructure layer. Our platform integrates the entire lifecycle of waste, connecting collection, verification, trade, and reporting within a single governed ecosystem... Our mission is simple: to bring transparency to the circular economy and turn waste into a traceable, high-value resource." 

By turning fragmented waste flows into accountable, scalable systems, Dawar has achieved nationwide impact. Today, it operates across 22 governorates and documents over 90,000 verified tons of recyclables in Egypt. It also applies ethical sourcing standards, enabling local materials to meet international market requirements. And now, with the acquisition of BekyaPay, Dawar has closed a critical first visibility gap by collecting post-consumer waste at the source.

“While most recovery systems only begin tracking at the aggregation stage, that data is often captured too late to be actionable," Fathi explained. "By integrating BekyaPay, we trace materials closer to their origin, drastically improving pricing accuracy, routing efficiency, and compliance integrity. The integration unlocks higher material yield, earlier data capture, stronger material predictability, incentive-based inflow at source, and audit-ready reporting for EPR and brand mandates. This isn’t about volume alone. It’s about intelligence at the beginning of the chain.”

Fathi also noted that the integration of BekyaPay supports Dawar’s larger goal of developing Egypt's first digital waste management ecosystem. “For years, the first mile of waste recovery was invisible," he pointed out. "By digitizing that entry point, we introduce visibility at the source and reinforce every transaction that follows through a fully functioning ecosystem with end-to-end traceability, securing higher-quality material, eliminating leakage, ensuring audit-ready compliance for global brands, and creating a defensible data layer. Over time, competitive advantage in this sector will belong to those who control information flows, not just material flows. Closing the first mile is about strengthening the architecture of the entire system.” 

That same approach has also shaped how Fathi thinks about building ventures in emerging sectors like his. “Do not underestimate informal networks," he advised. "They have been operating long before most platforms existed, and they will continue to operate without you. The question is not whether they work. It is whether you can add value to how they work. Digitization only succeeds when it improves pricing visibility, stabilizes income, reduces friction, and protects the people operating within the system. Technology should not disrupt trust. It should formalize it. Structure should not displace what already works. It should make it more resilient. In the MENA, the founders who will build lasting companies are not the ones who try to replace informal networks, but those who understand them deeply enough to strengthen them without alienating them."

Pictured in the lead image from left to right is Mohamed Ibrahim, co-founder and CEO of BekyaPay and Amr Fathi, founder and CEO of Dawar. Image courtesy Dawar.