A delivery company founded by Arabs takes on its competition in Israel

Deep inside the labyrinthine alleys of Acre’s Old City – home to a 700-year-old Crusader fortress – Muhammad Hani could not order a takeaway pizza. Delivery drivers struggled to navigate the maze of tightly packed ancient buildings, narrow alleyways and winding streets – leaving many of the Arab citizens of Israel there cut off from such services. “Only the residents like us know how to get around these neighborhoods,” the 27-year-old said. And even if a driver could find the house address, another barrier remained. Many Arab citizens could only pay with cash, while delivery companies such as Wolt, the leading operator in Israel, only accept card payments. “Most people here don’t have a bank card,” Hani explained. Launched in 2019, Haat set out to tackle some of the barriers that left communities like Hani’s on the margins of Israel’s high-tech society. Not everyone in the country known as the “Startup Nation” could reap the rewards of cutting-edge services from the latest applications. At first, the idea for Haat was simple: combine technology with the old-fashioned convenience of cash. But the technology ultimately found uses far beyond its initial goal, helping the Israeli postal service map villages and allowing small, local restaurants to grow a customer base far beyond their neighborhoods. Founded by Hasan Abasi in the Arab-majority town of Umm al-Fahm in Israel, Haat now offers its services across 50 cities, working with more than 10,000 restaurants and markets, and employing more than 500 couriers. Its success has earned the app a valuation of more than $100 million, according to the company’s PR and Communications lead, Aida Kaddan. Abasi’s creative strategy with Haat also helped him nab a place on Globes’ 40 Under 40, an annual list by one of Israel’s leading business newspapers recognizing promising young Israelis. Abasi came up with Haat – Arabic for “bring” – while working for Google in Switzerland. The 36-year-old returned to Umm al-Fahm from Zurich as his wife was expecting a second child. One evening, he tried to order a pizza, but the courier kept getting lost. The experience helped Abasi recognize a wider problem – and an opportunity. He launched Haat with five others, starting in Umm al-Fahm before expanding to neighboring Arab towns. Demand exploded during the Covid-19 pandemic, when lockdowns kept people at home and online orders boomed. Abasi was also aware of the systemic issues around banking in Israel, particularly in the Arab sector, where, according to a 2024 study from The National Insurance Institute of Israel, more than 37% live in poverty. Many lower-income families simply don’t have electronic payment options, especially in Umm al-Fahm, according to Mayor Samir Mahamed, making cash the most convenient form of payment. Haat combined the convenience of shopping and dining through a smart phone application with an old-school pay-by-cash option. This option proved useful beyond Arab communities and has caught on in mixed neighborhoods like Jaffa, where many people do not have bank cards, Kaddan said. Haat has since expanded its services to allow users also to pay utility and phone bills with cash. “The cash option came from answering the needs of the society. It has now become one of Haat’s most significant advantages in every area where it operates,” she said. As Haat focused on reaching those underserved by other delivery applications, its work to turn previously unnavigable streets into mapped-out towns advanced. In some Arab neighbourhoods in Israel, not only were the maze of densely built homes a challenge for delivery services, but streets also often lacked formal names or had unnumbered houses. “Navigation relied heavily on neighborhood names, family compounds and local landmarks, which posed considerable challenges for postal distribution, commercial deliveries and emergency services,” said Mahamed, the Umm al-Fahm mayor. Over the past six years, Haat has helped redraw the map of underserved cities. By tracking courier routes and using machine learning to identify roads, neighborhoods, buildings and entrance points overlooked by conventional navigation services, the company says its maps now include 30% more streets in the areas it serves than other mapping platforms. This was particularly useful for residents in Umm al-Faham, a city of more than 57,000. The mayor said Haat helped support a city-wide project carried out by the local authority to name streets and number houses. CNN has reached out to Israel’s postal service for comment. The improved access to Arab neighborhoods also opened up new markets for restaurants and shops overlooked by the wider community, something Haat said “democratizes visibility.” Krunchy Chicken began as a single fried chicken restaurant in Baqa al-Gharbiyye, an Arab town in northern Israel near the border with the occupied West Bank. The restaurant has since opened two more branches in the Israeli Triangle – a concentration of Arab towns and villages on the Green Line, which demarcates the boundary between the West Bank and Israel. At first, Krunchy Chicken relied largely on word-of-mouth advertising, according to manager Sharif Masarweh. But the online exposure of Haat helped greatly, Masarweh told CNN, as did the convenience of different payment options. “The fact that there is an option for cash also allowed more people to use the application and to order food from our restaurant and others. It helped a lot, because not everyone prefers to pay using a bank card,” he said. Haat recently expanded into Tel Aviv, taking on Finland’s Wolt, the dominant player in Israel’s food delivery market. Wolt motorbikes zipping along the streets and weaving through dense traffic are an ubiquitous sight in the beachside city. Now the local competitor is trying to build its own foothold in Tel Aviv using its strengths. “Haat reads the needs of local people because we are local and operate from within,” Kaddan said. “We see what is missing and try to fill those gaps with technology.”