SWVL Overview

SWVL

Transportation has been one of the most lucrative businesses since the time of medieval travels. Within the transportation sector, there are lots of opportunities available to entrepreneurs and all who are willing to delve into it.

The transportation sector has always been affected by changes in industries. Tourism, technology and economical changes are some of the factors that have over time caused in the transportation sector.

Going through time we will find a host of transportation options that were used and how some of all these options have either been improved on, or those options have been abandoned for better, easier and cheaper alternatives.

As improvements become more and more evident and alternative modes of transport available, the opportunities to do business within the industry equally grew. Individuals could either run private transport schemes as sole proprietors, or others could own a  of vehicles and carriers that could commute different routes and areas.

An interesting turn of events led to a business line where people who do not own vehicles or drivers could still make profits from transportation. These of Information Technology in transportation made sure of this. By acting as intermediaries between commuters and passengers, businesses and agencies could now make money off the transportation industry.

This has led us to review one of the big brands in the transportation industry, SWVL. The company which started out in Egypt in 2017, and has made it’s marks through a lot of achievements over the last few years. We will be looking at most of these landmark achievements from the perspective of their journey through time.

SWVL had its foundation in Egypt in April of 2017. It was co-founded by Mostafa Kandil and two of his friends from school, Ahmed Sabbah and Mahmoud Nouh. They had a start-up fund of 30,000 dollars of their personal funds. In a turn of events, the company eventually fell on the shoulders of Mostafa Kandil who became the only founding member of the company left as Ahmed Sabbah and Mahmoud Nouh left the company in 2019 and 2021 respectively.

The company is currently headed by Mostafa Kandil, CEO and co-founder and Youssef Salem, CFO. The CEO Mostafa Kandil was born in Cairo and earned a bachelor’s degree in Petroleum and Energy Engineering from American University. Kandil had previously worked for Rocket Internet, where he launched car sales platform Carmudi in the Philippines. He also worked for ride-sharing company Careem. Careem has now become a subsidiary of Uber.

Youssef Salem who is the CFO had previously served as an Executive Director at Moelis & Company and an was an Associate at QInvest. Also, he is an Adjunct Professor of Practice at the American University in Cairo.

SWVL which started as an application with the original idea of reducing traffic congestion in Cairo, but later switched its focus to developing a platform that would be used for booking of cheap bus trips within the city.

According to Wikipedia, “SWVL is a provider of tech-enabled mass transit solutions, offering intercity, intracity, B2B and B2G transportation products and services.” SWVL is mainly focused on mass transit, it uses its application to provide ride-hailing services. The application runs on propriety algorithm that uses the passenger’s location and destination to calculate the quickest possible trip time.

Passengers use the application to book for private bus rides on fixed routes. The services offered by the SWVL provides better and more reliable alternatives to public transportation. These alternatives do not include individual ridesharing options.

The technology SWVL uses also creates room for more efficiency than public transportation, this in turn results in lower emissions. Amongst its services you will still find that Swvl also provides inter-city rides, car ride-sharing, and corporate services. SWVL has two core products which are ridesharing and vanpool.

The company after its inception in 2017, carried out both its Series A and Series B funding rounds in the following year, 2018. The company realized a figure of 8 million dollars in its Series A funding, while its Series B raised a staggering figure that ranged between 25 and 35 million dollars. The company’s valuation at the time was about 100 million dollars.

The two funding rounds were co-led by investors which included Dubai-based BECO Capital, Africa-based investor DiGAME, and Silicon Badia.

In 2019, which was the year that met the exit of one of SWVL’s co-founders Ahmed Sabbah from the company, expansions were recorded. In that year, SWVL expanded its reach into other nations. It started with Kenya in early 2019, where it partnered with another company BRCK to provide free wifi on its buses. SWVL later ended up expanding its operations to Nigeria not long after.

By June of the same 2019, the company was said to have raised 42 million dollars from venture-capital firms which included Sweden’s Vostok, Dubai-based BECO Capital, New York-based Endeavor Catalyst, China’s MSA, Palo Alto-based Autotech and the Oman Technology Fund.

In same 2019, it subsequently expanded its operations into Pakistan, beginning with city of Lahore. Next it moved into Jordan, beginning with the city of Amman by November of 2019. Turn of events led to the company being banned in Kenya, not just it, other bus hailing apps too and this was due to regulatory issues. The ban took place in October of 2019. Same year also recorded the move of the company’s headquarters from Egypt to Dubai.

Things moved smoothly for the start-up SWVL and in July of 2021, the company signed a merger deal with the Special Purpose acquisition Company (SPAC) Queens Gambit Growth Capital. This Queens Gambit Growth Capital was the first SPAC that had its leadershiop made entirely of women. It was agreed as a part of the deal that the CEO of Queens Gambit Growth Capital, Victoria Grace and other executives join the board of SWVL while two other SPAC members would join the advisory board of SWVL.

The merger deal was valued at 1.5 billion dollars and this made it to be the largest Middle East-based unicorn to go public on the Nasdaq. The transaction also included  part where SWVL would raise a sum of 121.5 million dollars in Private Investment in Public Equities (PIPE). Amongst the investors in PIPE were  Chimera, Agility, Luxor Capital, The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Zain and Teklas Ventures.

Not long after the announcement of the merger with SPAC, SWVL went further to make a number of acquisitions, which expanded the company into Europe and Latin America. According to Wikipedia.com, the mergers were recorded in this order, “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 merger with Queens Gambit SPAC closed on the 31st of March, 2022 and the combined company began trading under the ticker SWVL. Further developments recorded that “in May 2022, SWVL planned to layoff 32% of its team, on June 2, 2022 SWVL announced it was significantly reducing its offer of services in the Pakistani market and  in July 2022, SWVL announced that its planned acquisition of UK-based smart bus company, Zeelo, had been dropped.