Ammar Hmid: How Presto Became a Libyan Technology Success Story

Ammar Hmid is a Libyan entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Presto, a technology company built around delivery, logistics and digital consumer services.

Presto launched in Tripoli in 2020. By October 2024, it had registered more than 2,000 merchants and 24,000 drivers, while its application had reached around one million downloads. The platform also passed 23,000 orders in a single day. Rest of World described it at the time as Libya’s largest startup by users and employees and the second-largest delivery app in North Africa after Glovo.

Those figures explain Presto’s scale. They do not fully explain why the company matters.

Hmid built the business in a market with limited venture capital, heavy reliance on cash, fragmented delivery networks and a labour market still dominated by public employment.

Presto had to work around those conditions rather than wait for them to disappear.

That makes Hmid’s story relevant beyond food delivery. Presto took a business model already familiar elsewhere, rebuilt parts of it around Libyan conditions and then began testing whether that model could travel beyond the country.

It also places Hmid within a wider generation of Libyan entrepreneurs building the private economy beyond oil.

Who Is Ammar Hmid?

Ammar Hmid returned to Tripoli in 2017 after spending several years in the United Kingdom.

Rest of World reported that he had studied management strategy and returned to Libya interested in applying some of the business models he had encountered abroad. The timing was difficult. Libya’s political and economic environment made launching a technology company considerably harder than in the markets he had been observing.

Hmid did not immediately start Presto.

TechCabal reported that he had lived and studied in the UK for more than eight years before returning to Libya, where he explored consulting and later worked in the fast-moving consumer goods sector. He was learning the local market while looking for a business model that could work within it.

That distinction matters.

Presto did not emerge from a mature startup ecosystem. There was no large domestic venture-capital industry, sophisticated online-payment infrastructure or established app-based delivery market waiting for a founder to enter.

The gaps were substantial.

They were also the opportunity.

By 2020, Covid-19 had changed consumer behavior. Restaurants, supermarkets and other businesses needed better ways to reach people at home, while consumers had stronger reasons to use delivery services.

Hmid launched Presto that year.

What started as a response to a practical market need soon became something much larger.

Why Did Ammar Hmid Start Presto?

The idea behind Presto was simple enough: connect consumers, merchants and drivers through a digital platform.

Making that work in Libya was not.

Much of the infrastructure that delivery applications rely on elsewhere was underdeveloped. Digital payments remained limited. Delivery services were fragmented. Investors were cautious about Libya. Even recruiting and managing a large driver network required working around the structure of the country’s labour market.

Presto nevertheless had one advantage that mattered more than perfect infrastructure: demand.

Libyans were already comfortable using smartphones and social media to discover products and services. Restaurants and retailers wanted access to more customers. What was missing was a system capable of organizing the transaction from order to delivery.

Capital was harder to secure.

Hmid told TechCabal that venture investors were reluctant to back the business. By early 2023, the publication reported that Presto had raised more than $3 million from friends, family and a small number of private businessmen rather than conventional venture-capital funds.

That constraint shaped the company.

Presto could not assume another venture round would always arrive before the money ran out. Growth had to remain tied more closely to the economics of the business.

In an early company update, Presto reported reaching monthly profitability after approaching 100,000 orders in a month and generating more than $1 million in gross merchandise value. Those were company-reported figures. Ammar Hmid’s profitability update

By 2024, there was stronger independent evidence. Rest of World reported that financial records it reviewed, together with Hmid’s account, indicated that Presto was on course to generate more than $1 million in net profit that year.

For a startup operating in a market where institutional venture capital remains limited, profitability provided more room to grow without relying entirely on external funding.

How Did Presto Adapt Its Business Model to Libya?

Payments were one of Presto’s first major obstacles.

Delivery platforms in more digitized markets often assume customers will pay by bank card or mobile wallet.

In Libya, cash remained central.

TechCabal reported in 2023 that Hmid said roughly 96% of Presto’s payments were still made in cash. The company therefore operated cash-collection hubs where drivers could settle the money received from customers.

Presto could not force consumers to change their behavior before using the service, so it built around the behavior that already existed.

It was not as frictionless as a fully digital payment system. It worked.

That approach says something important about how Presto grew.

Instead of designing a product for an ideal version of the Libyan economy, the company designed around the economy that actually existed.

The environment has gradually changed.

Libyana now lists Presto among services customers can pay for directly using their mobile balance.

The National Commercial Bank also lists Presto among the services where customers can order through the app and pay using Yussor Online.

By 2026, Hmid said Presto had expanded further into digital services. Users could order food and groceries, arrange general deliveries, recharge mobile balances and pay electricity bills, while the platform offered more than 10 payment options and buy-now-pay-later functionality. Hmid’s 2026 Presto update

The direction is clear.

Presto began by finding a way to make a digital platform function in a cash-heavy market. As Libya’s electronic-payment infrastructure expanded, the company began incorporating more of it.

A Libyan technology company cannot assume the surrounding infrastructure will resemble London, Cairo or Dubai.

It has to build around what exists while remaining flexible enough to use better infrastructure when it arrives.

How Large Is Presto in Libya?

By October 2024, Rest of World reported that Presto had reached substantial scale:

• more than 2,000 registered merchants;

• 24,000 registered delivery drivers;

• roughly one million app downloads;

• more than 23,000 orders in a single day;

• more than 20 engineers working internally.

Those numbers should be read with their date attached. They describe Presto’s position in 2024 rather than its exact size today.

The company continued reporting growth afterward.

On its fourth anniversary, Presto said it had completed more than eight million orders, served close to one million users and worked with approximately 30,000 independent drivers and more than 2,300 restaurant, retail and food-sector partners. These figures were reported by Presto itself rather than an independent audit.

Geographically, expansion accelerated as well.

At the end of its 2025 expansion campaign, Presto identified Sabha as its 18th Libyan city.

More recent company updates have documented launches in Zuwara, Al-Jamil and Riqdalin.

These later milestones come from Presto itself.

They are still useful because delivery is partly a geographic business.

Adding a city is not simply a matter of changing a map inside an application. Each new market requires merchants, drivers, customer support, payment handling and local operations.

Presto has had to reproduce parts of its network every time it enters another market.

That makes geographic expansion one useful measure of its operating capacity.

How Has Presto Created Work in Libya?

Presto’s labour model is one of the more interesting parts of the business.

Libya’s labour market remains heavily shaped by public-sector employment. Presto created another way for people to earn income: platform-based delivery work.

That should not be confused with conventional employment.

A registered driver is not necessarily a full-time employee, and describing tens of thousands of registered drivers as an equal number of “jobs created” would overstate what the figures mean.

The more accurate description is that Presto created a large market for flexible work.

Rest of World interviewed 20 Presto drivers in 2024. Fifteen also held government jobs. Others included students and graduates looking for income.

For people in those situations, delivery work could sit alongside a public salary, university study or a job search.

Hmid has described Presto as helping introduce a gig-economy culture to Libya.

Whatever label is used, the economic function is straightforward: the platform provides a structured way for people with cars or motorcycles to earn money by fulfilling existing demand.

The effect is not limited to drivers.

Restaurants and retailers gain another route to customers. One Tripoli café owner interviewed by Rest of World estimated that joining Presto increased demand for his business by around 25%.

That is the part of platform economics that ordinary employment figures can miss.

The central company may employ a relatively small team while thousands of people and businesses earn through the network surrounding it.

How Ammar Hmid Built a Libyan Technology Team

Presto’s engineering story developed in a similar way.

Hmid did not come from a software-engineering background, and the company initially relied on outside developers.

According to Rest of World, Hmid first looked for engineering support inside Libya before contracting an Indian company to help develop the original application. As Presto expanded, more of that capability moved inside the business.

By 2024, Presto employed more than 20 in-house engineers. Some were young Libyans who had begun their careers at the company.

That matters because the development of Libya’s digital economy depends on more than consumers downloading applications.

It also depends on people who can build and maintain them.

Technology skills become more valuable when engineers have companies in which to apply them. A growing platform provides practical experience with products, payments, logistics, user behavior and systems operating at scale.

Presto is only one company, but capabilities often accumulate one company at a time.

From Delivery App to a Broader Digital Platform

Calling Presto a food-delivery app is increasingly incomplete.

The company began with food delivery. It subsequently moved into groceries, general delivery and other consumer services.

Hmid was already discussing that broader ambition years ago.

In a 2023 interview with TechCabal, he said the goal was to make Presto an “app for everything” for Libyan consumers, with plans at the time spanning areas such as pharmaceuticals, payments and other services.

By 2026, Hmid said users could order food and groceries, arrange other deliveries, recharge mobile balances and pay electricity bills through the platform. His update on Presto’s expanded services also described more than 10 payment methods and buy-now-pay-later functionality.

The logic is straightforward.

One of the hardest parts of building a platform is assembling the network: customers, merchants, drivers, payments and technology.

Once that network exists, adding another service can be easier than building an entirely separate platform from scratch.

Delivery established the network.

The next stage is finding more uses for it.

Can Presto Become a Regional North African Company?

The most consequential phase of Hmid’s strategy may now be happening outside Libya.

For years, Libya was more accustomed to technology companies from larger regional markets entering the country than to Libyan technology businesses expanding outward.

Presto is trying to reverse that direction.

Hmid had already spoken publicly about regional expansion by 2024. Tunisia became one of the first serious tests.

He later reported that Presto exceeded 1,000 orders in a single day in Tunisia less than two months after entering the market.

That figure comes directly from Hmid rather than independent market data, but the expansion itself marks an important change in the company’s trajectory.

Presto is no longer testing only whether its model works in Tripoli, Benghazi or Misrata.

It is testing whether a business built in Libya can be adapted to another North African market.

Mauritania appears to be part of the next stage.

In 2026, Hmid said he was looking forward to building in Mauritania. In the same update, a Presto team member described work on company incorporation, registration, regulatory compliance and the legal and administrative framework needed for a presence in the country.

That supports describing Mauritania as an expansion under preparation rather than an established operating market.

International expansion will be harder than adding another Libyan city.

Payments change. Regulation changes. Consumer behavior changes. Competition changes. Merchant economics change.

The systems Presto developed for Libya cannot simply be copied unchanged.

But that is also why the regional strategy matters.

If Presto can adapt again, the company moves from being a successful Libyan platform toward something still relatively uncommon: a Libyan technology business capable of exporting its operating model.

What Does Ammar Hmid’s Story Mean for Libya’s Digital Economy?

Ammar Hmid’s contribution is not best measured against the country’s oil sector or its largest industrial projects.

Technology operates through different economics.

Presto’s value lies in the network built around merchants, consumers, drivers, payments and software.

The company has given businesses another route to customers. It has created flexible income opportunities for registered drivers. It has built an internal engineering team. It adapted to a difficult payments environment and gradually added more digital options as those became available.

Perhaps most importantly, it did this without waiting for Libya’s business environment to become easy.

When cash dominated, Presto built around cash.

When local engineering capacity was difficult to find, the company initially outsourced development and later brought more of it in-house.

When institutional venture investors were reluctant to fund a Libyan startup, Hmid relied on private backing and pursued commercial sustainability.

When the domestic platform reached scale, the company started looking outward.

There are still important tests ahead.

Presto’s regional expansion remains young. Company-reported growth figures should continue to be distinguished from independently verified numbers. Competition will be tougher in markets where delivery and e-commerce platforms are already established.

But the company has demonstrated that a technology business founded in Tripoli can move beyond a small local operation.

That matters for the broader group of Libyan entrepreneurs building the private economy beyond oil.

The lesson is not that Libya needs more delivery applications.

It is that entrepreneurs can build around local constraints rather than treating those constraints as reasons not to start.

Hmid found a practical market problem, designed around the conditions he faced, developed more capability inside the company as it grew and then began testing whether the model could compete elsewhere.

That is why Ammar Hmid and Presto deserve attention beyond Libya’s technology sector.

They provide one example of what a more entrepreneurial Libyan private economy can look like.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Ammar Hmid?

Ammar Hmid is a Libyan entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Presto, a technology company operating across delivery, logistics and digital consumer services.

Who founded Presto in Libya?

Ammar Hmid founded Presto in Tripoli. The company launched in 2020 and developed from an on-demand delivery service into a broader technology platform.

What is Ammar Hmid known for?

Ammar Hmid is best known for founding Presto and building it into a large Libyan delivery and technology platform. He is also associated with the company’s expansion beyond Libya.

When was Presto founded?

Presto was founded in Libya in 2020. It began primarily with food and grocery delivery and later expanded into logistics, payments and other consumer services.

Is Presto only available in Libya?

No. Presto expanded into Tunisia, where Ammar Hmid reported that the company exceeded 1,000 orders in a single day less than two months after entering the market. In 2026, the company was also preparing the legal and administrative groundwork for expansion into Mauritania.

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