Cairo 14 April 2025:
Egyptian startup Hiryo, led by Salma Medhat, has been recognized with a special prize at the Aurora Tech Award 2025, an initiative of global mobility platform inDrive. Hiryo — the region’s #1 personal safety app — turns your loved ones into your private security team. With a simple interface that allows users to report incidents as easily as posting to social media, and provides safety insights about locations before visiting, Hiryo is redefining how people across Egypt and beyond experience peace of mind in public spaces.
This special recognition places Egypt on the global innovation map, celebrating Salma Medhat’s visionary leadership as CEO and co-founder of a venture that is both deeply personal and widely scalable.
Held from April 11–13 in Cairo, the Aurora Tech Award 2025 brought together the world’s most promising women-led startups for its global finale. This year’s competition received 2,018 applications from 116 countries — a record-breaking number — and spotlighted the top 10 global finalists, representing the top 0.5% of applicants. The shortlist featured groundbreaking innovators from MENA, LATAM, Central Asia, and APAC, whose startups span diverse industries, including artificial intelligence, fintech, and health tech.
The event was held in partnership with Entreprenelle’s SHE CAN conference — one of MENA’s most influential platforms for women-led innovation. During the event inDrive announced partnership with Entlaq, a key ecosystem builder and investment catalyst in the Egyptian startup landscape. The partnership between inDrive and Entlaq signals a deep, long-term commitment to creating systemic change across Egypt’s startup ecosystem.
“We’re proud to join forces with inDrive in Egypt — a country that is fast becoming a regional hub for innovation and entrepreneurship,” said Menna Zaghlol Co-Founder Communications and Public Affairs.Together, we aim to close the gender investment gap, create new opportunities for high-potential founders, and provide long-term infrastructure for growth across MENA.”
“Egypt’s startup ecosystem continues to grow, and women-led ventures like Hiryo are paving the way. With strategic partners like Entlaq, the Aurora Tech Award is not just recognizing founders — it’s helping build the ecosystem that will support them for years to come,” said Isabella Ghassemi-Smith, Head of the Aurora Tech Award.
The 2025 Aurora Tech Award winners are:
● First Place: Solape Akinpelu, founder of HerVest, (Nigeria) – is a fintech platform providing financially underserved women in Africa with access to savings, impact investing, and credit, particularly for smallholder female farmers.
● Second Place: Loretxu Garcia Arraztoa, Nido Contech (Chile)– develops nature-based materials to reduce costs and environmental impact in the construction industry.
● Third Place: Shreya Prakash, FlexiBees (India) addresses a critical global challenge: low female workforce participation. The platform connects experienced women professionals with businesses through flexible, project-based, and remote work models, creating a win-win solution for both talent and employers
● Fourth Place: Laura Velásquez Herrera, Arkangel AI (Colombia) uses artificial intelligence to tackle preventable diseases through early detection. Their AI SaaS platform transforms medical data into AI algorithms without requiring coding expertise.
● Fifth Place: Leonie Korn, UpLeap (Switzerland) is an AI-driven platform revolutionizing medical training through interactive, hands-on simulations.
The winners of the Aurora Tech Award 2025 will receive cash prizes of $30,000, $20,000, $15,000 for first, second, and third place and per $10,000 for fourth and fifth places, respectively. Each finalist will gain exclusive access to the right investors, industry leaders, and strategic partners — the people who can move the needle on their business. But that’s not all. They’ll also tap into inDrive’s expertise, team, and global network, giving them the support and resources needed to accelerate their growth, secure funding, and scale globally.
For more information on the Aurora Tech Award 2025 winners, visit (add link to Aurora’s webpage with winners info) or visit our Linkedin.
inDrive empowers entrepreneurs worldwide, helping them grow their businesses — not only through the Aurora Tech Award, which inspires women entrepreneurs, but also through its services. inDrive.Delivery, in particular, gives businesses the freedom to choose their couriers, set prices, select the type of transport, and maintain speed and control over the delivery process. Today, inDrive.Delivery supports thousands of small businesses in more than 20 of Egypt’s largest cities, including Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, and Port Said.
About the project
The Aurora Tech Award, an initiative of inDrive, is a global award for the boldest tech founders building scalable, high-potential businesses, who just happen to be women. But this isn’t just about recognition—it’s a launchpad. Aurora provides winners with direct access to the right investors, industry experts, and a global network—everything they need to scale faster, grow smarter, and dominate their industries. It’s not just a competition, it’s a partnership that accelerates success and opens doors to the resources that truly matter.
inDrive operates in over 888 cities in 48 countries. Driven by its mission of challenging social injustice, the company is committed to having a positive impact on the lives of one billion people by 2030. It pursues this goal both through its core business, which supports local communities via a fair pricing model; and through the work of inVision, its non-profit arm. inVision’s community empowerment programs help to advance education, sports, arts and sciences, gender equality and other vital initiatives.
inDrive is a global mobility and urban services platform. The inDrive app has been downloaded over 300 million times, and was the second most downloaded mobility app in 2024. In addition to ride-hailing, inDrive provides an expanding list of urban services, including intercity transportation, freight delivery, and courier delivery. For more information visit www.inDrive.com
Please find the photo for publication here.
