Egypt-Based Roomz.rent Gets Backing From The UAE's Qora71

Egypt-headquartered co-living platform Roomz.rent has raised an undisclosed pre-seed round from Qora71, the UAE-based investor syndicate, along with a group of regional angel investors. The funding will be used to scale the startup’s shared rental offering across the MENA region, starting with a deeper push in its home market. 

Founded by Mohamed Ayman, Yasser El Sarrag, and Ahmed Mandour in Cairo in 2024, Roomz.rent targets young professionals, digital nomads, and students with fully managed room rentals and three-month minimum stays. The platform uses a matching algorithm to connect tenants with compatible flatmates while tackling some of the region’s long-standing housing challenges—such as inflexible leases, high upfront costs, and a lack of quality inventory. 

Ayman, who is also the CEO of the startup, spoke to Inc. Arabia about how Roomz.rent is navigating cultural sensitivities, redefining urban rentals through co-living, and preparing to scale its tech-driven model across the MENA region. “Cairo’s rental market is plagued by deep inefficiencies: long-term commitments, outdated search experiences, lack of trust, and limited affordability,” Ayman shared. “Young professionals, digital nomads, and students face a particularly tough time—either settling for low-quality options or navigating informal, often risky rental setups.” 

Rather than simply digitize these experiences, Ayman and his team, who personally experienced co-living in both Egypt and Saudi Arabia in order to cut costs, designed a solution to reinvent them. “The opportunity wasn’t just to digitize the experience, but to reimagine it entirely—through a co-living model that combines flexibility, affordability, and trust," Ayman explained. "Despite co-living being culturally new, the demand signals were clear: people were already informally sharing apartments to cut costs or find community. Roomz.rent simply gave this behavior structure, safety, and tech-enabled convenience.”  

Since inception, Roomz.rent has facilitated over US$100,000 in rental contracts in Egypt, with an average stay length of nine months. The startup is now focused on consolidating operations in Cairo before rolling out to additional urban centers in the region. But growing a co-living brand in MENA comes with its own set of cultural challenges. “Cultural nuance has been at the heart of everything we’ve built," Ayman noted. "In Cairo—and across MENA—shared living brings important considerations around religion, privacy, and family expectations."

“Our matching algorithm and screening layers were designed from day one to prioritize safety, comfort, and alignment of values," he continued. "We match users by lifestyle habits and gender (we don’t allow mixed gender co-living). In communications, we were intentional about framing Roomz.rent as a professional, secure platform—positioning it not just as housing, but as a curated community.” 

Looking ahead, Roomz.rent is developing a structured framework to prioritize market expansion. “Our market entry framework blends data with on-the-ground insight. We look at key indicators like rent-to-income ratios, urban density, and population growth, existing short-term vs. long-term rental dynamics, youth mobility, and job migration trends,” Ayman said. “We standardize our backend systems—matching, payments, support—but localize the customer experience: pricing strategies, language, property types, and even the kind of roommate matching attributes we emphasize.” 

The startup’s evolution is also shaped by changing tenant behaviors in the region. “We see a clear shift in mindset—from ownership to access, and from isolation to community," Ayman said. "Post the COVID-19 pandemic, people want affordability, but also connection. Even in traditionally conservative cultures, the stigma around shared living is diminishing—especially among young urbanites." To keep pace, Roomz.rent is investing heavily in its technology stack. “We’re continuously evolving our matching engine to factor in not just static filters, but behavioral data and feedback loops, [and] occupancy forecasting, [to help] us optimize supply across cities and improve room utilization.” 

As Roomz.rent prepares to scale beyond Cairo, Ayman reflects on the hard-earned lessons of navigating one of the region’s most fragmented and complex real estate markets, offering other entrepreneurs candid advice about what it really takes to build trust and traction in such an environment. “First of all, always validate what you’re building in the simplest form of a solution to the problem,” he said. “Build trust before scale. In markets with low transparency, your most important thing is credibility—through verified listings, secure payments, and strong customer support.  

“Design for local frictions, not global trends," he added. "Understand what actually breaks in your customer experience and solve that—tech comes second. Finally, be relentless about solving the offline experience, not just digitizing it."

Pictured in the lead image are the co-founders of Roomz.rent, Yasser El Sarrag, Ahmed Mandour, and Mohamed Ayman. Image courtesy Roomz.rent.