Swvl, a ride-sharing company based in Cairo and Dubai, announced plans to go public through a merger with special purpose acquisition company Queen’s Gambit Growth Capital.
Swvl will be valued at around $1.5 billion as a result of the transaction.
Swvl was co-founded in 2017 by Mostafa Kandil, who previously worked at the ride-sharing company Careem, which is now a subsidiary of Uber Technologies Inc.
Swvl primarily operates in the Middle East and Africa, providing ride-sharing in areas where public transportation is unreliable.
Swvl will be the second Middle Eastern company to go public through the SPAC route.
The company caters to a different type of customer focusing on people who don’t have alternative ways to go to and from job or school.
It intends to expand into both Latin America and Europe.
Queen’s Gambit Growth Capital raised $300 million when it was founded in January and another $45 million afterwards through underwriters’ overallotment option.
Swvl will also receive a $100 million PIPE (private investment in a public firm) from a consortium of investors including Agility, Luxor Capital, and Zain Group.
Swvl will now have $445 million in additional capital to invest in its growth and expansion.
Mostafa Kandil, Swvl’s co-founder and CEO, said in a statement, “We have succeeded in executing our business plan in some of the most challenging emerging markets, where inefficiencies in infrastructure and related mass-transit systems represent a universal problem, and have now reached a critical inflection point where we are ready to share our expertise and technology.”
Queen’s Gambit is a great partner because they share our values and are devoted to assisting Swvl achieve its long-term goals. Kandil continued.
“When establishing Queen’s Gambit, I was squarely focused on assembling a team of highly successful and strategically-minded women with unparalleled global relationships, to identify and then grow a disruptive platform that solves complex challenges and empowers underserved populations,” Victoria Grace, Queen’s Gambit Founder & Chief Executive Officer, said of the merger. We found all of these items and more in Swvl. We believe Swvl is positioned to capitalize on a genuinely global market opportunity now that it has built a leadership position in key emerging markets.”
The Cairo-based business has raised over $100 million to date, including an unannounced fundraising round earlier this year. Vostok New Ventures Global, Beco Capital, Raed Ventures, Sawari Ventures, MSA Capital, Silicon Badia, and Oman Technology Fund are among its prior investors. Its most recent public funding round was a $42 million Series B-2 round in 2019 — following which it discreetly raised another $20 million in early 2020.
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