Egypt's Swvl Does It Again, Raises $42 Million To Expand To Nigeria

Swvl, Egypt's mass transit startup, just raised $42 million from venture-capital firms Vostok, BECO Capital, MSA and Endeavor Catalyst. The startup will be using this money to fund their expansion to the coastal city of Lagos, Nigeria, anticipated to begin by mid-July. 

The two-year old-company operates in Egypt’s Cairo and Alexandria, and in Kenya’s Nairobi, but is currently looking to expand into other parts of Africa. “The plan is to be in at least two or three more African cities by the end of the year,” Mostafa Kandil, founder and chief executive officer, tells Bloomberg. “Lagos, Nigeria, is most likely the next market.”

Kandil, who spent some time working in Careem, and his team haven't stopped making headlines over the past two years raising $38.5 million across three funding rounds. However, Swvl has also made headlines about corporate abuse when a few employees took their voices to social media and created a controversy around the Egyptian startup directly competing with giants like Uber and about-to-be-acquired Careem; claiming they are overworked without compensation and when they voiced their concerns to the higher boards they were threatened to be replaced with Pakistani workforce.