Cairo-based Sylndr has raised $15.7 million as it expands into online used car sales and becomes a tool for auto financing, repairs and dealers. This round is led by Development Partners International’s Nclude fund, including follow-up investments from algebraic venture capital and NClude.
The company operates in Egypt's fast-growing but under-vehicle market, and he said the latest round includes both new equity and previously unnotified seed financing.
Over the past year, Sylndr has also raised nearly $10 million in debt financing from local banks, with its total raised $30 million since. Sylndr raised $12.6 million in pre-seed rounds in 2022.
Omar El DeFrawy and Amr Mazen, former executives of local food delivery and e-commerce startups, founded the used car platform in 2021, initially focusing on buying used cars directly from consumers, renovating them, and reselling them with warranty and money-back guarantees.
Since then, it has evolved into a wider mobile platform that provides digital car loans, automotive services and markets for third-party dealers.
“When we started the business, we focused primarily on consumer issues related to buying and selling,” said Omar El DeFrawy, co-founder and CEO, in an interview with TechCrunch. “When we started to expand this business, we knew it was much bigger and that creating value for our customers would require us to build other compelling businesses that integrate with what we are doing.”
Egypt has more than 6 million cars on the road, with demand for used cars due to currency depreciation and rising new import prices. In 2021, the government banned the import of used cars, forcing the market to rely entirely on domestic inventory and push prices to reflect exchange rates.
As a result, used cars in Egypt outstrip new cars at a speed of 3:1, mainly sold through unregulated dealers or confidential websites where informal transactions put buyers on most of the risks.
Sylndr sees this messy opportunity, which formalizes the process around inspections, standardized pricing, digital financing and secures ownership transfers, estimated at a $10 billion market.
El DeFrawy said the average selling price of the Sylndr platform is between $20,000 and $25,000. He explained that despite the loss of more than half of its value in the Egyptian pound, the figure has remained stable over the past three years. This is because used cars in Egypt are priced similar to new imported cars, which are sold in US dollars
Sylndr rejected sharing revenue or transaction volume, but said sales have increased nearly tenfold since 2022. During this period, Egypt Pound's revenue increased 22 times, and sales increased 22 times after adjusting for the dollar, after leading the financial business of Food Discovery Elmenus.
Sylndr's expansion beyond automotive sales to three new verticals is to reduce its reliance on inventory and capital.
There is a digital car financing product, Sylndr Swift, which connects buyers with banks and underwriters. According to El DeFrawy, the platform offers financing approval in less than 10 minutes. He added that Sylndr does not lend out from his balance sheet.
In addition to Swift, Sylndr has recently launched the Sylndr Plus, which offers inspection, maintenance and repair of cars sold on its platform. The third vertical Al-Ajans is a dealer-to-consumer market that allows third-party dealers to list and sell Sylndr to handle inspection, ownership transfer and payment of cars.
Each vertical runs under its own brand name, but Sylndr integrates them all into a single mobile app, creating a one-stop shop for buying, financing and managing car ownership. “We have fully integrated these services to help customers buy, sell, finance, rent and serve their cars and help dealers operate more effectively and operate digitally,” said former investment banker El DeFrawy.
He added that the company's revenue is evenly distributed between direct-to-consumer sales and B2B transactions with dealers. However, he expects newer financing and repair verticals to contribute up to 60% of gross profit in two years.
Sylndr currently works with more than 1,000 dealers nationwide and serves buyers and sellers through its online and offline channels. While other regional players, such as ContactCars, OLX and Nigeria's Autochek, who integrated into Egypt with Autotager in 2023, have similar products, El DeFrawy said he does not consider them close-range competition when it comes to providing buyers and dealers in the value chain.
He said Sylndr's inspection, renovation and infrastructure of banking partnerships made it difficult for external players to replicate their models.
So unlike other startups in Egypt, which traditionally had its home market as a bay, Sylndr plans to deepen its operations in Egypt, where the CEO asserted that it was “the largest used car trading company by quantity and value by quantity and value”.
"Sylndr is building a digital backbone of liquidity, where channels, trust and financing have long been barriers to ownership. Their integrated model brings business, credit and technology together, fundamentally improving the way Egyptians buy and sell."
This marks the third deal recently announced by VC firms in London following recent investments in Egypt's digital savings and credit platform MoneyFellows and Proptech startup Nawy.