Egypt’s online used-car retailer, SyIndr raises $12.6m pre-seed fund

An Egyptian online used car retailing startup announced a $12.6m pre-seed fund led by Saudi based early-stage firm, RAED Ventures. The company’s goal is to quickly become the most trusted used car retailer in Egypt and other regions.

Egypt has over 6million cars, it’s one of the largest African nations with 80% passenger cars on its roads. The comprehensive analysis of the used car and its sales in Egypt, its average prices of used car trends and development issues, the Egypt market comprises organised OEMS, Multi brands and online classified platforms.

Egypt used car market has a largely unorganised sector that outnumbers the organised sector. Most used cars market isn’t only large in Egypt; it is in almost all Nations with a large population with several startups defining the new era, of used car sales forum. Such as UK’s Cazoo, India’s Cars24 and spinny, Brazils instaCarro and Mexico’s Kavak. Carro- based SyIndr is new in the market, where other dealers dominate the sales. The automotive marketplace, where customers sell and buy used cars, raised a pre-seed fund of about $12.6million. It’s the largest of its kind in MENA and its sub-Sahara Africa is better than what Rabbit, a 20 minutes convenience delivery startup, did last November.

RAED Ventures is a Saudi based venture capital firm. VC firms Algebra Ventures, Nuwa capital, 1984 ventures and Global Founders Capital participated, with several regional and global investors. In Egypt other brands such as GBAuto, Mansour Automotive and Nissan are known for good resale value. In Egypt there is a lack of trust between buyers and sellers of used cars, said co-founder and CEO Omar ElDefrawy.

Sylndr is yet to go public but purchasing cars from individuals that are selling, purchasing for an agreed price, rebranding and reselling to new customers. Sylndr also plans on making the payment easier for consumers. Sylndr plans to open up to buyers in Q4 this year or Q1 2023.

The startup hopes to make money from retail sales, auction houses, dealerships and B2B sales. El Defrawy worked as an investment banker at EFG Hermes and Egyptian food delivery and E-Commerce sector with Souq.com, Hello Fresh and Cazoo, before venturing into Sylndr, there are over 40 team members and the capital intensive nature of the used car market are seasons for raising this large pres-seed round of venture capital cooling down amidst public sell-offs and tech companies devaluation.

Omar ElDefrawy said that his startup will help build trust among car users in Egypt.