Cairo-based Sylndr has raised $15.7 million as it expands beyond online used car sales into auto financing, servicing, and tools for dealers. Development Partners International’s Nclude Fund led the round.
The company, which operates in Egypt’s fast-growing but under-digitized vehicle market, said the latest round includes both fresh equity and previously unannounced seed financing.
Sylndr also raised nearly $10 million in debt financing from local banks in the past year, bringing its total raised since launch to over $30 million. Sylndr raised a $12.6 million pre-seed round in 2022, the largest of its kind in Africa.
Omar El Defrawy, former executive at a local food discovery platform, Elmenus, founded the used cars platform in 2021 and initially focused on buying used cars directly from consumers, refurbishing them, and reselling them with a warranty and money-back guarantee.
It has since evolved into a broader mobility platform, offering digital auto loans, car servicing, and a marketplace for third-party dealers.
“When we started the business, we were primarily focused on a consumer problem related to buying and selling cars,” said the CEO, El Defrawy, in an interview with TechCrunch. “And when we started to scale that business, it became very clear to us that the market is much bigger than that, and creating value to customers would require us to build other compelling businesses that integrate with what we’re doing.”
Egypt has over 6 million cars on the road, with demand for used cars growing amid currency devaluation and rising prices for new imports. In 2021, the government banned used car imports, forcing the market to rely entirely on domestic inventory, driving prices to mirror the exchange rate.
As a result, used cars in Egypt, while outnumbering new vehicles by 3:1, are primarily sold through unregulated dealerships or classified websites, where informal transactions leave buyers carrying most of the risk.
Sylndr sees opportunity in that mess, which it estimates as a $10 billion market by formalizing processes around inspections, standardized pricing, digital financing, and securing ownership transfers.
The average sale price on Sylndr’s platform is between $20,000 and $25,000, El Defrawy said. He explained that the number has remained stable in dollar terms over the last three years, despite the Egyptian pound losing more than half its value. This is because used car prices in Egypt are marketed similarly to imported new cars, which are dollar-pegged
Sylndr declined to share revenue or transaction volume but said sales have increased nearly tenfold since 2022. Revenue in Egyptian pounds increased 22 times during that period, and by a factor of five when adjusted for the dollar, the CEO, who previously led finance operations at food discovery Elmenus, claimed.
Digitizing Egypt’s car market
Sylndr’s expansion beyond car sales to three new verticals is to reduce its dependence on inventory and capital.
There’s Sylndr Swift, a digital automotive financing product that connects buyers with banks and underwriters. The platform provides financing approvals in under 10 minutes, according to El Defrawy. Sylndr does not lend from its own balance sheet, he added.
In addition to Swift, Sylndr recently introduced Sylndr Plus, which offers inspections, maintenance and servicing for cars sold on its platform. The third vertical, Al-Ajans, is a dealer-to-consumer marketplace that allows third-party dealers to list and sell cars with Sylndr handling inspection, ownership transfer, and payments.
Each vertical runs under its own brand name, but Sylndr has integrated them all into a single mobile app—creating a one-stop shop for buying, financing, and managing car ownership. “We’ve fully integrated these services to help customers buy, sell, finance, rent, and service their cars—and to help dealers operate more efficiently and go digital,” said El Defrawy, who’s a former investment banker.
The company’s revenue is now evenly split between direct-to-consumer sales and B2B transactions with dealers, he added. However, he expects that the newer financing and servicing verticals will contribute up to 60% of gross profit within two years.
Sylndr currently works with more than 1,000 dealers nationwide and serves both buyers and sellers through its online and offline channels. While other regional players such as Contactcars, OLX and Nigeria-based Autochek, which made inroads into Egypt with AutoTager in 2023, have similar offerings, El Defrawy says he doesn’t see them as close competition in terms of providing an end-to-end solution for buyers and dealers across the value chain.
Sylndr’s infrastructure of inspection, refurbishment, and bank partnerships makes it difficult for outside players to replicate its model, he says.
As such, unlike other startups in Egypt that have traditionally used their home market as a springboard to the Gulf, Sylndr plans to deepen its presence in Egypt, where the CEO asserts it is “the biggest used car trading company by volume and value.”
“Sylndr is building the digital backbone of mobility in a market where access, trust, and financing have long been barriers to ownership. Their integrated model brings together commerce, credit, and technology to fundamentally improve how Egyptians buy and sell cars,” said Ashley Lewis, Managing Partner at DPI Venture Capital.
This marks the third deal announced by the recently launched London-based VC firm in the past month, following investments in Egypt’s digital savings and credit platform MoneyFellows and proptech startup Nawy.
Other VC firms, including Algebra Ventures, Nuwa Capital, Raed Ventures, Egyptian Gulf Holding, Uncovered Fund, Beltone Venture Capital, and Camel Ventures, participated in the round.
