E-bus firm Swvl entered the Kenyan market a couple of months ago. The Egypt-owned app has several buses that operate in select parts of the Nairobi, and has since exited the pilot period for city-wide trips.
The latest news from the firm confirm that the bus booking app has secured a $42 million investment that will allow it expand its turf to other markets in continental Africa. At the moment, Swvl is eyeing Nigeria as its next frontier.
According to reports, Swvl, which also runs its operations in Alexandria, Morocco, raised the funds from several venture capitalists including Vostok, BECO Capital, MSA, and Endeavor Catalyst that are based in Sweden, Dubai, China and New York, respectively.
Started about two year ago, Swvl has now raised near $80 million in investment, effectively making it one of the most highly-funded startups in the continent. The company was founded in Cairo Egypt as an e-bus solution for commuters.
Similar to the likes of Uber and other apps that operate under the same business model, Swvl does not own bus or employ drivers. Instead, it has inked deals that help bus drivers with financing of those vehicles. One of its key partnership is with Ford that provides minibuses to their clients.
Locally, Swvl has a couple of competitors, although Little Bus, which is under the management of Little, is the one that has running operations in Nairobi alongside Swvl. We discussed our Swvl experience in a previous post, which has since improved.
