Sylndr Raises $15.7M to Expand Used Car Marketplace

Beulah Godfrey

May 20, 2025
4 min read

Egyptian startup Sylndr has raised $15.7 million in a new funding round led by London-based Development Partners International’s Include Venture Capital Fund. This latest round pushes Sylndr’s total funding to over $30 million since it launched.

The company plans to use the fresh funds to grow beyond just selling used cars online. It will now offer car financing, vehicle servicing, and tools to support car dealers in Egypt.

Sylndr’s Funding Includes Equity, Debt, and Seed Capital

Sylndr revealed that the new round includes both fresh equity funding and some earlier unannounced seed investments. Over the past year, the company also secured $10 million in debt financing from local banks. Back in 2022, Sylndr raised $12.6 million in pre-seed funding, which was the largest of its kind in Africa.

Several other investors also took part in this round. These include Algebra Ventures, Nuwa Capital, Raed Ventures, Egyptian Gulf Holding, Uncovered Fund, Beltone Venture Capital, and Camel Ventures.

This deal marks the third investment in Egypt in the past month for DPI’s venture capital fund. It previously backed digital savings platform MoneyFellows and real estate startup Nawy.

Ashley Lewis, Managing Partner at DPI, said Sylndr is building the “digital backbone” of Egypt’s car market. He praised Sylndr’s model for combining e-commerce, financing, and technology to improve how Egyptians buy and sell vehicles.

How Sylndr Started and Evolved

Former Elmenus executive Omar El Defrawy co-founded Sylndr in 2021. At first, the company bought used cars directly from owners, repaired them, and sold them with a financial guarantee. Now, it has grown into a full mobility platform that offers car loans, vehicle servicing, and a dealer marketplace.

El Defrawy explained that Sylndr first set out to solve a consumer problem — making it easier to buy and sell cars. But as the company scaled up, it realized the market was much larger. To offer better value to customers, it had to build more connected services.

To lower its reliance on keeping cars in stock, Sylndr launched three new products:

Sylndr Swift: A digital financing tool that connects buyers to banks. It provides loan approval in under 10 minutes.
Sylndr Plus: Offers inspection, repairs, and servicing for cars listed on the platform.
Al-Ajans: A marketplace where third-party car dealers list vehicles. Sylndr handles inspections, ownership transfer, and payments.

Even though each product has a separate brand, Sylndr has integrated them all into one mobile app. This way, customers can buy, finance, and manage their cars in one place.

“We’ve built a platform that helps people buy, sell, rent, finance, and service their cars. It also helps dealers move online and operate better,” said El Defrawy.

Sylndr Targets Egypt’s Broken Used Car Market

Sylndr entered Egypt’s used car market to fix a system filled with unregulated dealerships and risky classified ads. Many buyers in Egypt face fraud due to the lack of proper checks in car sales.

Egypt has over 6 million cars on the road, and the demand for used cars grew sharply after currency devaluation made new imports too expensive. In 2021, the government banned used car imports, pushing prices even higher. Now, used cars sell at nearly the same rate as dollar-priced imports.

Sylndr aims to fix the system by offering verified inspections, fair pricing, digital financing, and safe ownership transfers. The company says the average sale on its platform is $20,000 to $25,000, a price that has stayed steady in dollar terms despite the falling value of the Egyptian pound.

Rapid Growth and Future Goals

Since 2022, Sylndr’s sales have grown nearly 10 times, while revenue in local currency increased 22 times. In dollar terms, revenue rose by 5 times.

Today, Sylndr earns almost equally from direct sales to buyers and business-to-business (B2B) sales to dealers. But El Defrawy expects that financing and servicing will soon account for 60% of the company’s gross profit.

Sylndr now works with over 1,000 car dealers across Egypt and supports buyers and sellers through both online and offline platforms. When asked about competition, El Defrawy said platforms like Contactcars, OLX, and Nigeria’s Autochek (via AutoTager) don’t match Sylndr’s full-service approach.

While other startups often expand to new markets quickly, Sylndr plans to focus more deeply on Egypt. El Defrawy said the company is already the biggest used car trading platform in the country by sales volume and value.

In 2024, Sylndr raised $7.5 million (370 million EGP) in capital financing from EFG Hermes, part of EFG Holding, the leading investment bank in the MENA region.