Presto Libya: Inside the Delivery Platform Built by Ammar Hmid

Presto started with a relatively simple proposition: use a mobile application to deliver restaurant orders in a country where organized app-based delivery was still limited.

Six years later, the business is considerably harder to describe as simply a food-delivery app.

Founded in Tripoli in 2020 by Ammar Hmid, Presto has expanded across Libya, entered Tunisia and begun establishing a presence in Mauritania. Its platform now extends beyond restaurant meals into groceries, retail delivery, last-mile logistics, mobile top-ups and electricity-bill payments.

The scale has also changed substantially. Presto’s current company profile reports more than 28 million completed deliveries, 3.1 million users and 80,000 drivers across its platform. These are company-reported figures and appear to cover Presto’s wider operations rather than Libya alone, but they demonstrate how far the business has grown from the startup documented by Rest of World in 2024, when it had roughly one million app downloads, more than 2,000 registered merchants and 24,000 drivers.

The company’s physical reach has expanded as well. Presto described Sabha as its 18th Libyan city when it launched there in 2025. In 2026, the company announced further launches in Zuwara, Al-Jamil and Riqdalin.

Presto therefore provides a useful case study in a different type of Libyan private-sector development. Unlike a steel mill or food-processing complex, its productive asset is a network connecting customers, merchants, drivers, payments, software and logistics.

The question is no longer whether Libya can produce a successful delivery application.

It is whether a technology company built around the particular difficulties of the Libyan market can turn those capabilities into a scalable regional business.

What Is Presto?

Presto is a Libyan on-demand delivery and digital-services company founded in Tripoli in 2020.

Its original business centered on restaurant delivery through Presto Eat. The company subsequently expanded into groceries through Presto Jet, deliveries from shops through Presto Shop and last-mile delivery through Presto Line.

That expansion reflects the logic of the network Presto was building.

Once a company has customers using an application, merchants connected to its system and drivers distributed across a city, the same infrastructure can be used to move more than restaurant meals.

Groceries can travel through it.

Retail products can travel through it.

Businesses can use it for last-mile deliveries.

Digital services can eventually be layered on top.

Presto has continued moving in that direction. In 2026, Hmid announced that users could pay electricity bills directly through Presto alongside existing services including mobile top-ups. He said the platform supported more than 10 payment methods as well as a buy-now-pay-later option.

That makes the company increasingly difficult to classify purely as a delivery application.

It is becoming a broader consumer-services platform built around a logistics network.

How Did Presto Start?

Presto emerged from an unusually difficult environment for a technology startup.

Hmid returned to Libya after studying in the United Kingdom and initially delayed his plans to start a technology company because of the country’s political and security conditions. By 2020, the combination of improved conditions and the disruption created by the COVID-19 pandemic gave him an opening to launch an on-demand delivery business.

The early operation was considerably smaller than the network that exists today.

Hmid has said Presto began with around 40 motorcycles and 35 cars, initially operating with hired drivers. The company subsequently shifted toward a freelancer model as it searched for a more scalable way to expand the delivery network.

That decision became central to the business.

Instead of owning enough vehicles and employing enough drivers to handle every delivery, Presto could connect independent drivers to demand through its platform.

The model reduced the amount of physical capital required to expand while creating flexible earning opportunities for drivers.

By 2024, Rest of World reported that Presto had registered approximately 24,000 drivers, more than 2,000 merchants and close to one million app downloads. The company had also surpassed 23,000 orders in a single day.

By its fourth-anniversary update, Presto itself reported more than 8 million completed orders, close to one million users, approximately 30,000 independent drivers and more than 2,300 restaurant, shop and food-company partners.

The current company profile now reports more than 28 million completed orders, 3.1 million users and more than 80,000 drivers across the wider platform.

Even allowing for the fact that these later numbers are company-reported and may include international operations, the trajectory shows substantial network growth.

Presto Had to Build Around Libya’s Cash Economy

One of the most important parts of Presto’s development was not visible on the consumer application.

It was the system required to handle money.

Delivery platforms built in countries with high card penetration can assume that a large share of orders will be paid digitally. Libya presented a different problem.

Cash remained central.

That meant Presto could not simply copy the operating system of a European food-delivery company.

It had to build mechanisms around cash collection and settlement.

Rest of World reported that Presto created exchange points across its operating cities where drivers could remit cash collected from customers.

This sounds like an operational detail, but it illustrates something important about technology companies in emerging markets.

The application itself is only one layer.

The more difficult work is often building the physical and financial infrastructure underneath it.

In Presto’s case, logistics, driver management and cash settlement had to function together.

This partly explains why a company built in Libya may possess capabilities that are relevant to other markets where digital payments, formal addresses and logistics infrastructure are also less developed.

From Four Cities to a National Network

Presto initially concentrated heavily on Tripoli before expanding geographically.

Benghazi became an early test. The company reported exceeding 1,000 daily orders less than a week after launching there.

Misrata followed. Hmid reported more than 5,000 deliveries and the recruitment of over 300 freelance drivers during the first six days of the Misrata launch.

By 2024, Presto was operating in Tripoli, Benghazi, Misrata and Zliten.

Expansion accelerated considerably in 2025.

Sabratha and Surman became the fifth and sixth Libyan markets announced by the company, followed by Qasr Bin Ghashir and Warshefana.

By the end of that expansion cycle, Presto announced its arrival in Sabha as the platform’s 18th Libyan city.

The expansion continued in 2026 with launches in Zuwara, Al-Jamil and Riqdalin.

This geographic development matters because delivery is fundamentally a local operational business.

Opening an application in another city is easy.

Building enough merchant relationships, recruiting enough drivers, balancing supply with demand and maintaining customer service in that city is considerably harder.

Each new market therefore tests whether the operating model can be reproduced rather than simply whether consumers can download the software.

Presto’s Most Important Asset May Be Its Driver Network

The visible side of Presto is its consumer application.

The harder-to-replicate asset may be the logistics network behind it.

The company’s current profile reports more than 80,000 drivers across its platform. Presto’s own earlier updates have described tens of thousands of flexible income opportunities created through its driver system.

The figure should not be interpreted as 80,000 full-time employees.

Presto operates heavily through independent drivers, and registration does not necessarily mean every driver is continuously active.

The economic effect is still relevant.

Digital platforms can create a mechanism through which people monetize vehicles and available time without committing to traditional employment schedules.

That matters in Libya, where public-sector employment remains unusually dominant and the private labour market has historically struggled to absorb enough workers into formal companies.

The challenge is that gig work brings its own questions around income stability, worker protections and long-term career development.

Presto nevertheless demonstrates that technology platforms can organize flexible private-sector work at a scale that was previously difficult to achieve.

The Business Had to Become Profitable Earlier Than Many Startups

Presto’s financing history also distinguishes it from the conventional venture-backed technology model.

According to Rest of World, Hmid initially raised approximately $3 million from friends after struggling to attract institutional venture capital. The publication reported in October 2024 that Presto had not subsequently raised another funding round and, based on financial documents it reviewed, was on track to generate more than $1 million in net profit during 2024.

Earlier company updates also show that profitability became an objective relatively quickly. Hmid wrote in 2022 that the strategy was to grow while remaining profitable, with Presto reporting its first monthly net profit after tax and depreciation during that period.

That differs from the expansion model historically used by many international delivery startups, where large venture rounds financed aggressive discounts and geographic expansion while profitability was postponed.

Limited access to Libyan venture capital forced Presto toward a different discipline.

That constraint may ultimately have created an advantage.

A company unable to rely on repeated funding rounds has to learn earlier whether its unit economics actually work.

Tunisia Was the First Major Test Outside Libya

A Libyan business can dominate its domestic niche and still struggle internationally.

That makes Tunisia particularly important to Presto’s development.

Rather than remaining a planned expansion, Tunisia became an operating market. In a 2025 update, Hmid said Presto exceeded 1,000 orders in a single day in Tunisia less than two months after entering the market, despite initially operating with limited geographic coverage and a selected restaurant base.

The significance is not the 1,000-order number by itself.

Tunisia is a more competitive delivery market, with consumers already familiar with established platforms.

Presto therefore cannot rely on being the company that introduced organized app-based delivery.

It has to compete.

That provides a stronger test of whether the operating capabilities developed in Libya can travel across borders.

The company’s current activity continues to show Libyan and Tunisian teams operating within the same wider organization.

If Tunisia becomes a sustainable business rather than simply an expansion experiment, Presto will have demonstrated that its model has value outside the conditions that originally created it.

Mauritania Is the Next Expansion Market

Presto’s next geographic move is taking shape in Mauritania.

In 2026, Hmid publicly discussed building the business there, while a Presto team member described work on company incorporation, regulatory compliance and administrative and legal infrastructure for the Mauritanian expansion.

That distinction is important.

The available evidence shows that Presto is establishing its Mauritanian operation, not that it has already reached the same commercial stage there as it has in Libya or Tunisia.

Mauritania nevertheless fits the logic of the company’s strategy.

It is a market where a business accustomed to building logistics systems around cash usage, fragmented infrastructure and less mature digital commerce may be able to reuse some of the operating knowledge developed in Libya.

For Presto, success there would strengthen the case that its Libyan origin is not a handicap to regional expansion but potentially part of its competitive advantage.

Presto Is Moving Beyond Delivery

The company's evolution also raises a more important strategic question.

What exactly does Presto want to become?

Its current services already extend beyond restaurant orders.

Food delivery remains central, but the platform also offers groceries, retail products and general last-mile delivery. More recently, it has added services including mobile top-ups and electricity-bill payments, while supporting multiple digital payment methods and buy-now-pay-later functionality.

The direction resembles the broader “super-app” strategy used in parts of Asia and other emerging markets.

A successful delivery application already has several valuable components:

a user base;

frequent consumer engagement;

payment relationships;

merchant connections;

a driver network;

and a logistics system.

Adding adjacent services can increase the value of that existing network without requiring the company to acquire every user from zero.

But broader platforms also become more complex.

A company that performs well in delivery is not automatically good at payments, financial services or every other consumer category.

The opportunity is substantial, but expansion into more services has to preserve the reliability of the core business.

Ammar Hmid’s Role in Presto

Ammar Hmid founded Presto and remains closely associated with its strategic direction and regional expansion.

His importance to the company is particularly visible in the way Presto’s model was adapted to the constraints of the Libyan market rather than copied directly from an international delivery platform.

The company changed its driver model.

It built cash-settlement infrastructure.

It developed grocery delivery.

It expanded city by city.

It gradually built more of its own technical organization.

And it pursued profitability in an environment where access to institutional venture capital was limited.

Presto is therefore the clearest expression of Hmid’s entrepreneurial record and the strongest reason his profile matters within Libya’s emerging private technology sector.

For more on his background and business development, read the full Ammar Hmid profile.

What Does Presto Mean for Libya’s Technology Sector?

The importance of Presto extends beyond delivery.

Libya has historically been a difficult place to build a technology company at scale.

Venture funding is limited.

Payment infrastructure is fragmented.

Logistics can be difficult.

Technical talent has often moved abroad or into other industries.

Consumer behavior is heavily shaped by cash.

Those conditions can discourage investment, but they also create problems that technology businesses can solve.

Presto’s development demonstrates that digital adoption in Libya can reach substantial scale when the product solves a practical problem and the operating model is adapted to local conditions.

The company also creates demand for software engineers, product managers, operations staff, customer-service teams, marketing professionals and other private-sector roles that are different from Libya’s traditional employment base.

Its current LinkedIn profile lists a company size of between 501 and 1,000 employees, separate from its much larger independent-driver network.

That matters because a technology ecosystem does not develop only through venture funding or startup launches.

It develops when companies become large enough to employ people, train them and give them operating experience that can later spread to other businesses.

What Are Presto’s Main Risks?

Presto’s rapid expansion creates several challenges.

The first is operational quality.

Delivery networks become harder to manage as the number of cities, drivers, merchants and services increases. Maintaining delivery times and customer support while expanding geographically requires increasingly sophisticated operations.

Competition is another issue.

Presto benefited from entering an underserved Libyan market, but international expansion places it against stronger incumbents with greater access to capital and mature operating systems.

Payments remain another important variable. Libya is moving gradually toward greater digital payment use, but banking reliability and cash dependence still shape the economics of online commerce.

The company also faces the challenge common to many platform businesses: balancing the interests of consumers, merchants and drivers simultaneously.

Customers want lower prices.

Merchants want lower commissions.

Drivers want higher earnings.

The platform has to make the economics work for all three while generating its own profit.

Regional expansion adds another layer because the operating model that works in Tripoli cannot simply be assumed to work unchanged in Tunis or Nouakchott.

What Comes Next for Presto?

Presto has already passed the stage where success can be measured only by downloads.

The next phase should be judged by more demanding indicators.

Can the company maintain service quality while its Libyan footprint expands?

Can Tunisia become a durable and profitable foreign operation?

Can Mauritania move from corporate establishment into meaningful commercial scale?

Can new digital services increase customer engagement without distracting from logistics?

And can Presto turn a platform built around Libya’s difficult operating environment into a genuinely regional technology company?

Those questions matter because the company has already demonstrated domestic product-market fit.

The next test is scalability.

Why Presto Matters to Libya’s Private Economy

Presto represents a different kind of private-sector project from the factories, industrial complexes and physical infrastructure that dominate much of Libya’s investment discussion.

Its infrastructure is partly digital and partly physical.

Software connects the network, but the network itself consists of real merchants, drivers, payments, customer-service teams and logistics operations spread across multiple cities.

That combination has allowed the company to organize economic activity that was previously more fragmented.

Restaurants gain another distribution channel.

Consumers gain access to more merchants.

Drivers gain flexible income opportunities.

Businesses gain last-mile delivery infrastructure.

And Libya gains a technology company that is now attempting to export its operating model rather than merely import foreign technology.

The current company-reported figures of more than 28 million completed orders, 3.1 million users and 80,000 drivers suggest that Presto has moved well beyond the experimental-startup stage.

The more important question is what comes after domestic scale.

If Presto can translate the systems it built in Libya into successful operations across several African markets, it could demonstrate something that remains relatively unusual in the Libyan private economy: a locally built consumer technology business capable of expanding abroad.

That would make Presto important for reasons extending well beyond food delivery.

Explore the wider Libya private-sector projects series and read the full Ammar Hmid profile.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Presto Libya?

Presto is a Libyan technology and on-demand delivery company founded in Tripoli in 2020. It offers food, grocery, retail and last-mile delivery services and has expanded into additional digital services.

Who founded Presto?

Presto was founded by Libyan entrepreneur Ammar Hmid.

How large is Presto?

Presto’s current company profile reports more than 28 million completed deliveries, 3.1 million users and over 80,000 drivers across its platform. These are company-reported figures and may include international operations.

How many Libyan cities does Presto operate in?

Presto announced Sabha as its 18th Libyan city in 2025 and subsequently announced launches in Zuwara, Al-Jamil and Riqdalin in 2026.

Does Presto operate outside Libya?

Yes. Presto has launched commercially in Tunisia, where it reported surpassing 1,000 orders in one day within its first two months. The company is also establishing an operation in Mauritania.

What services does Presto offer?

Presto provides restaurant delivery, groceries, shop deliveries and last-mile logistics. It has also added services including mobile top-ups and electricity-bill payments.

Is Presto profitable?

Rest of World reported in October 2024 that financial documents it reviewed showed Presto was on track to generate more than $1 million in net profit that year. More recent audited profitability figures were not publicly available in the sources reviewed for this profile.

How was Presto funded?

Rest of World reported that Hmid initially raised approximately $3 million from friends after struggling to secure institutional venture funding and that the company had not raised another funding round as of October 2024.

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