Based on Cairo Sylndrd It has raised $ 15.7 million as it expands beyond the sales of car -used car sales to car funding, service and tools for representatives. Development Partners International’s NClude Fund has led the round.
The company, which is active in the rapidly growing but sub-divided Egyptian vehicle market, said the last round includes both fresh shares and previously unannounced seed funding.
Sylndr has also increased the $ 10 million debt funding from local banks in the past year, bringing its entirety since began to over $ 30 million. Sylndr increased the $ 12.6 million pre-seed tour in 2022, the largest of its kind in Africa.
Omar El DefrawyA former executive on a local food discovery platform, Elmenus, founded the used car platform in 2021 and initially focused on the market for used cars directly from consumers, renovating them and reselling them with guarantee and guarantee of money.
Since then it has evolved into a wider mobility platform, offering car loans, car service and a market for third parties.
“When we started the business, we mainly focused a consumer problem related to the market and car sale,” CEO El Defrawy said in an interview with TechCrunch. “And when we started escalating this business, it became very clear to us that the market is much greater than it and the creation of value to customers would require us to build other exciting businesses that are incorporated with what we do.”
Egypt has over 6 million cars on the road, with the demand for used cars growing in the midst of currency devaluation and increasing prices for new imports. In 2021, the government banned used car imports, forcing the market to rely entirely on domestic stock, driving prices to reflect the exchange rate.
As a result, used cars in Egypt, while exceeding 3: 1 new vehicles, are mainly sold through unmistakable delegations or sorted websites, where informal transactions leave buyers carrying most of the risk.
Sylndr sees the opportunity in this chaos, which estimates as a purchase of $ 10 billion by formulating procedures around inspections, standardized pricing, digital funding and securing property transfer.
The average sale price on the Sylndr platform is between $ 20,000 and $ 25,000, El Defrawy said. He explained that the number has remained stable in dollar terms in the last three years, despite the Egyptian pound that loses more than half of its value. This is due to the fact that used car prices in Egypt are marketed similar to imported new cars, which are dollars-pegged
Sylndr declined to share the revenue or volume of transactions, but these sales increased almost ten times by 2022. Egyptian pounds increased by 22 times during this period and at a rate of five when they were adjusted to the Dollar, the CEO of the Dollar Dollar.
Digitization of Egyptian car market
Sylndr’s expansion beyond the sales of car to three new verticals is to reduce his dependence on stocks and capital.
There is Sylndr Swift, a digital car financing product that connects buyers to banks and contractors. The platform provides funding approvals in less than 10 minutes, according to El Defrawy. Sylndr is not borrowed from his own balance sheet, he added.
In addition to Swift, Sylndr recently introduced Sylndr Plus, which offers inspections, maintenance and maintenance for cars sold on its platform. The third vertical, al-Ajans, is a market for consumer representatives that allows third parties to record and sell cars with Sylndr handling inspection, ownership and payments.
Each vertical runs with its own brand, but Sylndr has all incorporated into a single mobile app by creating a single store for the market, funding and managing car ownership. “We have fully integrated these services to help customers buy, sell, fund, rent and serve their cars – and help delegates work more efficiently and go digitally,” said El Defrawy, who is a former investor.
The company’s revenue is now uniformly divided between sales directly to the consumer and B2B transactions with representatives, he added. However, it expects that the newest funding and service of verticals will contribute up to 60% of the gross profit within two years.
Sylndr is currently working with more than 1,000 national agents and serves both buyers and sellers through its online and offline channels. While other regional players, such as Contactcars, Autochek based in OLX and Nigeria, who raid Egypt with Autotager in 2023, have similar bids, El Defrawy says he does not see them as a close competition in terms of end -to -end resolutions.
Sylndr’s infrastructure for inspection, renovation and banking partnerships makes it difficult for external players to reproduce its model, he says.
Therefore, unlike other newly established Egypt businesses that have traditionally used their domestic market as a gulf springboard, Sylndr plans to deepen its presence in Egypt, where the CEO claims to be “the largest car trading company”.
“Sylndr builds the digital backbone of mobility in a market where access, trust and funding have long been obstacles to property. Their complete model concentrates on trade, credit and technology to fundamentally improve the way in which Egyptians Venture Capital.
This marks the third deal announced by the recently launched VC company that received London last month, after investment in Egypt’s digital savings and credit platform and the start of Proptech Nawy.
Other VC companies, such as Algebra Ventures, Nuwa Capital, Raed Ventures, Egyptian Gulf, the Capital Venture Capital and Camel Ventures, participated in the round.
