SWVL is an Egyptian mobile app that was created to facilitate the daily commute of Egyptians. The bus transportation network aims at reinventing urban mass transit by providing buses to every part in Cairo.
The founding objective of SWVL is to facilitate and improve the movement of bus takers in Egypt by providing a fast, comfortable, and affordable ride.
Through the SWVL app, anyone can view, book, and track fixed-route bus trips at very reasonable prices.
A great business idea is one that comes to solve a problem or many problems and this is exactly how SWVL came to life. With the never-ending traffic on the Egyptian streets (especially in Cairo) and the poor public transportation quality, Mostafa Kandil, Mahmoud Nouh, and Ahmad Sabbah had an idea to help daily commuters through the traffic and transportation struggle.
Swvl was co-founded in Egypt in April 2017 by Mostafa Kandil and two of his school friends, Ahmed Sabbah and Mahmoud Nouh with $30,000 of their own money. After four months, ridesharing company Careem invested $500,000. Swvl began developing an app to address traffic congestion in Cairo, but then switched to developing it as a platform for booking cheap bus trips in the city. In 2018, Swvl closed its Series A and Series B rounds of funding. Series A raised $8 million while Series B raised between $25-35 million, with a company valuation of around $100 million. Both rounds were co-led by Dubai-based BECO Capital, Africa-based investor DiGAME, and Silicon Badia.
In early 2019, Swvl expanded into Kenya,where it partnered with BRCK to provide free wifi on its buses. In the same year, it also expanded to Nigeria.
In June 2019, the company raised US$42 million from venture-capital firms including Sweden’s Vostok, Dubai-based BECO Capital, China’s MSA, New York-based Endeavor Catalyst, Palo Alto-based Autotech and the Oman Technology Fund.
It subsequently expanded its operations into Pakistan, beginning with Lahore, in July 2019, and into Jordan, beginning with Amman, in November 2019. In October 2019, Swvl was temporarily banned in Kenya along with other bus-hailing apps due to regulatory issues. In late 2019, the company moved headquarters to Dubai.
In July 2021, Swvl signed a merger deal with the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Queen’s Gambit Growth Capital, the first SPAC led entirely by women. As part of the deal, Queen’s Gambit CEO Victoria Grace and another executive joined the board of Swvl while two other SPAC members joined Swvl’s advisory board. The deal valued Swvl at $1.5 billion, making it the largest Middle East-based unicorn to go public on the Nasdaq.
As part of the transaction, Swvl raised $121.5 million in private investment in public equities (PIPE). PIPE investors included Agility, Chimera, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Luxor Capital, Teklas Ventures and Zain.
Shortly after the SPAC merger announcement, Swvl made a number of acquisitions, expanding into Europe and Latin America. In August 2021, Swvl acquired Shotl, an on-demand ride service that uses shuttles in Europe and Brazil. In November 2021, Swvl acquired ViaPool, a private-public hybrid mass transit company with operations in Argentina and Chile. In March 2022, Swvl acquired Door2door, a Berlin-based software company that licenses its technology to cities, transport companies and private providers in ten European countries.
The Queen’s Gambit SPAC merger closed on March 31, 2022 and the combined company began trading under the ticker SWVL
Two months after going public, SWVL plans to lay off 32% of its team.
On June 2, 2022 SWVL announced it was significantly reducing its offer of services in the Pakistani market.
facilitate the daily commute
providing a fast, comfortable, and affordable
allows commuters to reserve and pay for rides through its app.
it use GPS tracking for 100% visibility on all routes
it offer 24/7 support including on holidays!
Less than 1-day turnaround on invoicing
Our fleets have 99.9% on time reliability
CEO
At 24, Mostafa Kandil quit his job with a lofty goal: to redefine the $1 trillion global mass transit market, utilizing the power of AI and machine learning. Inspired by his upbringing in Egypt, the struggles he faced traveling home from Cairo to see his family, and the lack of safe transportation options for his mother and sisters, Kandil launched Swvl in 2017.
Kandil started his career at Rocket Internet in 2014, where he launched the car sales platform Carmudi in the Philippines, which became the largest car classifieds company in the country in just six months. He then served as Rocket Internet’s Head of Operations. In 2016, Kandil left Rocket Internet for Careem, a ride-sharing company and the first unicorn in the Middle East, where he supported the platform’s geographic expansion into new markets. Careem is now a subsidiary of Uber, based in Dubai, with operations across 100 cities and 15 countries.
Kandil graduated from the American University in Cairo in 2014 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Petroleum and Energy Engineering.
CFO
Youssef Salem is the CFO of Swvl who, at 29 years old, will become one of the youngest CFOs of a Nasdaq listed company at the close of the $1.5bn business combination with Queen’s Gambit which makes Swvl the first $1bn+ unicorn from the Middle East to list on Nasdaq.
Youssef is also an Advisor at Moelis & Company with 9 years of investment banking experience with Moelis and prior to that with QInvest. He executed > 20 infrastructure M&A, capital raises, and financings with > $65bn in value. These include leading the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company Transformation Program which generated > $25bn of proceeds from > 10 transactions, and the Saudi Aramco Portfolio Optimization Program which debuted this year with the $12bn transactions with EIG led consortium. He also executed > 25 transactions across other sectors such as TMT, FIG, and real estate, and sovereign advisory. These include leading the acquisition of a stake in the Empire State Realty Trust, debut Sukuk for Goldman Sachs and Governments of Luxembourg and Hong Kong, and venture debt for InMobi.
Youssef was previously an Adjunct Professor of Practice at the American University in Cairo (AUC). He has a Bachelor of Science from AUC and is a CFA Charter-holder and Fellow of the Society of Actuaries.
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Swvl is a multinational mobility as a service provider that offers tech-enabled ridesharing services. It operates privately-owned buses and allows commuters to reserve and pay for rides through its app.Swvl operates in 114 cities in 18 countries across Latin America, Europe, Africa and Asia.The company went public via a SPAC merger in March 2022 and is traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker SWVL
Source : thenationalnews _ sme10x _ investors.swvl _ beiersdorf _ Amazon _ allianztiriac _ alibaba _ mars _ henkel _ emaar _ decathlon _ swvl
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