Mina Shahid is the Co-Founder and CEO of Numida, a Ugandan fintech platform providing unsecured digital working capital loans to micro and small businesses across East Africa. Egyptian-Canadian by background, he has lived and worked across Uganda, Ghana, Zambia, and Colombia, driven by a deep belief that small business growth is the key to economic prosperity for millions of Africans.

Mina studied at the University of Toronto and began his career as a Local Governance Consultant and Market Development Strategist at Engineers Without Borders Canada. He later served as an Acumen Global Fellow and co-founded Kulemela, a venture providing custom financial products to small Ghanaian agribusinesses.

A two-time founder, Mina previously co-built a lending company in Ghana before pivoting and co-founding Numida in 2016, applying lessons from failure to build a more resilient model. He was named a Top 10 finalist in the Jack Ma Foundation Africa's Business Heroes 2024 competition, selected from nearly 20,000 applicants across 54 countries.

Under Mina's leadership, Numida became the first Ugandan startup accepted into Y Combinator (W22) and raised a $12.3M pre-Series A round led by Serena Ventures, with participation from Breega, 4Di Capital, and Y Combinator. He has expanded Numida from Uganda into Kenya and Rwanda, bringing fast and fair financing to underserved entrepreneurs.

Numida has disbursed over $100 million in unsecured capital across more than 550,000 loans to micro and small businesses, with a mission to serve 1 million African business owners by 2030. Mina grew the share of female borrowers in Numida's portfolio to 50%, championing economic gender inclusion across East Africa.