Lagos residents will now have one more online ride-sharing option to choose from by July this year. Egypt’s ride-sharing startup SWVL has announced plans to launch in Lagos, Nigeria in July. 5O buses would be on the road from the date of the launch, according to Swvl’s Country General Manager in Nigeria. This is expected to be a huge challenge to existing ride-sharing options, such as Uber, Bolt, and ride-hailing motor-bike alternatives.
SWVL expects the surging population of Nigeria’s most populous city to be on its side. The startup is already in Kenya and Egypt and has plans to expand to Uganda soon. Other target countries include Thailand and Vietnam, and possibly operations in seven world mega-cities by the end of this year.
Barely 2 years in existence, it is the most funded startup in Egypt.
Swvl’s Business Model
SWVL’s goal is to make it easier for Egypt’s residents to book bus rides at a fixed rate on existing routes.
Users schedule trips, pay online or in cash and are given virtual boarding passes.
Even with fierce competition from the likes of Buseet and Uber vying into premium public transport service, SWVL’s application has been downloaded for well over 360,000 times on Google play store and Apple iStore.
The platform completes 100,000 rides monthly.
It was the first company to introduce the service in Egypt in 2017 before Careem and Uber joined the sector late last year.
Swvl is however different from its competitors because of its series of partnership deals. The startup’s credit facility agreements with Nasser Social Bank and EFG Hermes Bank, and after-sales support and maintenance services with Ford-trained technicians are some of these moves.
What Egyptian SWVL users think about the startup is its priority on affordability, comfort, and safety.
Not Afraid Of Competition
Although Swvl is the first riding app to offer bus services in Egypt, giant transportation startups Careem and Uber have recently offered their own bus services.
Mostafa Kandil, Egyptian CEO and founder of Swvl, has however noted that the joining of Uber and Careem to the industry has not influenced Swvl’s growth asserting that they have witnessed remarkable development since the two competitive players have launched. In 2018, the startup was valued at nearly US$100 million, becoming the second Egyptian company after Fawry to reach these figures.
The startup has recently signed an agreement with Ford motor company to deploy more cars on the road. Ford Transit, which the startup intends to use is already the third best selling van of all times. SWVL is already in possession of about 100 Ford Transits. Hazem Taher, SWVL’s Head Marketing Manager, said the vans were ready to go and they’re excited to push them on SWVL’s route.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.
Just founded about 2 years ago, Egypt’s ride-sharing startup SWVL is on its way to displacing market shares for other Egypt’s ride-sharing startups. The startup recently signed an agreement with Ford motor company, to deploy more cars on the road.
How The Terms of This Agreement Would Be A Game Changer for SWVL
The agreement will combine the brilliance of the Ford Motor Transit, world’s best-selling van brand, with an app-based mass transit system that enables commuters in Egypt’s major cities to enjoy an affordable, convenient, safe and reliable alternative to existing transportation services.
Ford Transit, which the startup intends to use is already the third best selling van of all times. SWVL is already in possession of about 100 Ford Transits. Hazem Taher, SWVL’s Head Marketing Manager, said the vans were ready to go and they’re excited to push them on SWVL’s routes.
This agreement not only gives SWVL an advantage within the Egyptian private transport market. It also, by some distance, allows it to broaden its reach in the MENA (the Middle East and North Africa) market.
The timing is more than excellent for SWVL. Egypt hosts this year’s TOTAL African cup of Nations (AFCON), with commuters expected to quadruple in major Egyptian cities where matches will be played.
From Alexandria to Cairo, to any place in Egypt, SWVL provides commuters in Egypt’s major cities with cheaper alternatives to existing transportation services.
SWVL’s goal is to make it easier for Egypt’s residents to book bus rides at a fixed rate on existing routes. Users schedule trips, pay online or in cash and are given virtual boarding passes.
Even with fierce competition from the likes of Buseet and Uber vying into premium public transport service, SWVL’s application has been downloaded for well over 360,000 times on Google play store and Apple iStore.
It was the first company to introduce the service in Egypt in 2017 before Careem and Uber joined the sector late last year.
What SWVL Is Doing Differently
SWVL is different from its competitors because of its series of partnership deals, including the current one. The startup’s credit facility agreements with Nasser Social Bank and EFG Hermes Bank, and after-sales support and maintenance services with Ford-trained technicians are some of these moves. What SWVL users think about the startup is its priority on affordability, comfort, and safety.
How This Partnership Will Help SWVL
SWVL founders are convinced this partnership will help it take the next big step forward.
“SWVL was created to help improve people’s lives by revolutionizing the transport scene in Egypt with a smart solution that helps ease the commute. We’re proud of the results we’ve achieved in such a short period of time, and the work that Ford has put in to help elevate the levels of service we offer our customers,” CEO, Moustafa Kandil said.
I think we are in uncharted territory when it comes to expansion when it comes to growth for an Egyptian startup. We feel that this is our responsibility, and we are committed to bringing what we have done in Egypt, scaling it even further and bringing it to the rest of the emerging markets.
Speaking at the announcement in Cairo, Ford North Africa MD Achraf El-Boustani said,
“We are thrilled to bring Ford Transit to Egypt, debuting in such a prominent and important role through this partnership with SWVL. The key to Ford Transit’s success as a mobility platform is its reputation for dependability, versatility and capability, and we’re confident that Swvl operators here will soon learn just why thousands of people around the world rely on the Ford Transit to get the job done.”
SWVL’s domestic competition includes Uber and Careem, who are sometimes the same company. But SWVL has the momentum right now, raising all the funds, signing all the partnerships, expanding into major African cities, many of which are clogged by chugs of traffic and would represent ready markets for SWVL’s deft ride-sharing system.
SWVL was founded in 2017 by three young Egyptian entrepreneurs — Mostafa Kandil, Ahmed Sabbah and Mahmoud Nouh. As noted on its website, the company is “a revolutionary idea born from passion, loyalty, and persistence to face all challenges on the table …not just a means to facilitate commuting, but a hunger to strive for solutions, encourage the contribution of youth in innovation and inspire change.” So far, they appear to be doing just that.
Of the total amount of about $686.4 million raised by African tech startups last year, Egypt got a share of $68 million. SWVL got about $38 million out of Egypt’s share, making the startup the most-funded Egyptian startup. The startup has expanded to Nairobi, Kenya, with plans for Manila, Jakarta, and Dakar.
In February this year, SWVL entered the Ugandan market, registering a presence in Kampala.
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh, a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organizations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution, and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.
Leaving the security of a daily job for something as uncertain as running your own startup could be one of the hardest experience you could ever have in life. Behind the hard calculations and planning and stiffness, we found some random thoughts from top startup owners, some of whom even started out as losers.
Jason Njoku, Founder of iROKOtv
In 2010, the Nigerian Jason Njoku and the German Bastian Gotter launched irokotv, a web platform that provides paid-for Nigerian films on-demand, which is usually dubbed ‘the Netflix of Africa’ and which is believed to be one of Africa’s first mainstream online movie streaming websites. With its headquaters in Lagos, Nigeria and offices in London and New York. iROKOtv brand was so valuable that Jason said in less than a year old at the time, investors paid $80,000 for 10% of the iROKOtv but sold to other existing investors, for $2.4 million. In some of his posts, he made the following points about starting out.
‘I remember when I started iroko. Everyone thought I was an idiot. That’s fine, it wasn’t a bad conclusion. I was x10 failure in startup hits. When we started making investments in Nigeria back in 2012, that seemed stupid. We were way too early. Pretty stupid. I agree. Consumer internet in Nigeria is so early; it’s pretty scary today. Breaking rocks and bleeding stones for every Naira of revenue is the least fun thing to do… I don’t believe in game changing strategic moves. I don’t believe that there is one decision you make which fundamentally certifies your success. I believe in iteration, in inch by inch tactical hits and misses……I believe in a thousand small decisions.’’
On why IROKO has remained profitable, Jason wrote thatIROKO has diversified the business where no one unit represents more than 35% of revenue.’’
Alemu owns SoleRebels, an Ethiopian company that makes made-to-order sustainable footwear handcrafted in Addis Ababa by Ethiopian artisans. The company has a distribution network in over thirty countries worldwide; selling to market kings such as Whole Foods, Urban Outfitters and Amazon.
‘‘ Stop looking at consumers and start looking at them as what they are: people! Being a successful entrepreneur is not simply hard work. It is about having good fortune and also a great team beside you! These multiple factors have allowed me to take SoleRebels to the next level.’’
Mostafa Kandil, CEO SWVL, Egypt
Mostafa Kandil, Mahmoud Nouh and Ahmed Sabbah were all below 30 years of age when they founded SWVL, a premium mass transit system in Egypt’s capital city, Cairo. The goal was to make it easier for Egypt’s residents to book bus rides at fixed rate on existing routes. Users schedule trips, pay online or in cash and are given virtual boarding passes. Even with fierce competition from the likes of Buseet and Uber vying into premium public transport service, SWVL’s application has been downloaded for well over 360,000 times on Google play store and Apple iStore. The platform completes 100,000 rides monthly. It was the first company to introduce the service in Egypt in 2017 before Careem and Uber joined the sector late last year. SWVL has expanded to Kenya.
In a recent interview with Start Scene, he shared some of his experience:
“I had graduated in Petroleum engineering, but as I started working I hated it; I felt it was too stiff for me,…I was also part of something called the Growth Team, which directly reports to the CEO [Mudassir Sheikha]. I remember it was my first week and he came to me and said: “when I quit McKinsey [& Company], I knew I could come back. The same goes for you; if you leave Careem now to start something and fail, you can always come back.” That was on my first week. I kept meeting him every day, and something we used to check at the Growth Group was the average trip fare, which in Egypt was about 3–4 dollars. I knew that was a lot for an average Egyptian; so in February I decided I would leave to create something new.
…..Around the world, public transportation is a loss-making machine. If you can take this load off the government and privatise it in a way that is super cheap and create job opportunities, you are revitalising a sector. We now have a huge fleet; we have 40 routes and 300 buses on the road, but we don’t own any assets, so it’s super scalable”
“You need to have the right people around you — you can’t do everything yourself. A lot of entrepreneurs think they need to be good at every aspect of the business but this is not the case.”
Shola Akinlade, Founder Paystack
Paystack is a Lagos-based, e-payment solution founded by Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi. The company reported in 2017, barely two years after its founding, that its user base grew from 1,400 merchants to close with over 7,700 live merchants, accepting payments with Paystack. It also reported that in 2017, the startup reached 1 billion Naira ($3 million) in monthly transaction value, closing 2017 with NGN 2.7 billion Naira ($7.5 million) in monthly transaction value. In an interview with Forbes Magazine, Shola Akinlade, noted that:
‘‘ We started Paystack because we knew online payments in Africa were essentially broken and someone definitely had to do the hard work of fixing it… The challenge was to solve the issue of online payments in Africa, somehow connecting the super-fragmented aspects of the sector. What we did was develop multi-channel payment options for merchants across the country, enabling them to accept payments from around the world, via credit card, debit card, and direct bank transfer on web and mobile. It’s taken two years of non-stop hard work to grow it from idea stage, to the product we have today.’’
On what made them grow so fast, Akinlade said:
‘‘ When we tell people that they can start receiving payments within 30 minutes from sign-up, I think many are, initially, a little cynical. So many merchants in Nigeria have faced so many challenges with receiving payments over the years, I think perhaps they thought it sounded a little too good to be true. But they had faith, they tried us out, our product worked for them. Our customers have been our evangelists, and that has really helped us grow quickly.’’
Andrew Watkins-Ball -Founder JUMO
JUMO was founded in 2014 by the South African-born CEO, Andrew Watkins-Ball. JUMO started as a mobile financial services startup company in Ghana, providing payroll loans to government and corporate workers and consumer loans to informal and market traders. Through September 2016, it had delivered more than 10 million loans to customers in 6 countries including Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, Rwanda and Uganda. The platform leverages an uncommon digital credit model that does not require customers to have prior financial account ownership or a credit history.
‘‘ Building something to solve a big problem is hard… Products that are designed from positive and authentic emotions will be loved by customers…. Your customer must love your product or you don’t get the adoption you need to build a big business against sustainable demand. They must feel that you care and they must feel that the product comes from an authentic objective. A great example is Wikipedia. You can feel the social objective of the product.’’
Anne Wawira Njiru, Founder Food4Education, Kenya
Wawira Njiru founded in 2012 Food4Education, the social enterprise startup which provides 2000 meals per day across 4 schools around Ruiru, a small town in the Central Part of Kenya. The startup is aimed at improving children’s health, school performance as well as increasing their chances of getting into good high schools in a merit-based high school entrance system.The startup secured US$ 300,000 funding from Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation to expand their reach over the next 3 years, in 2015. This was followed up by Wawira Njiru being awarded the 2018 Global Citizen Prize for Youth Leadership thereafter receiving US$250,000 from the Global Citizen in partnership with Cisco.
‘‘ It’s easy to get side-tracked especially if you’re talented (or think you are) in many things, but there’s a lot of value in mastering one thing and learning how to do it well. There’s also a lot of value in consistency and learning how to do things excellently. It may sound boring but doing the same thing over and over will help you become better and a master in your field.”
Christain Ngan, Founder Adlyn Holdings and Madlyn Cazalis Group, Cameroun
Adlyn Holdings and Madlyn Cazalis Group designs, manufactures, transports natural beauty products and operates in Central Africa and West Africa with more than 200 distributors (supermarkets, pharmacies and beauty institutes). Ngan was listed two consecutive years (2014 and 2015) in Forbes magazine as one of the 30 Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs in Africa.
‘‘ My greatest weakness was not having enough talent around me for a long time. It was difficult to find the right people. Then I decided to train, motivate and coach. Training is important in Africa because we often tend to choose between honesty and competency. It was difficult to find honest, skilled people. But, with time, I managed to empower my employees and they are now good managers.’’
Churchill’s Njorku was named by Forbes as one of the top 20 technology startups in Africa (Forbes Africa Magazine, 2011) and by FastCompany as one of the most innovative companies in Africa (FastCompany February 2017). Over the years Njorku has grown to serve 200,000+ monthly unique users across Africa. Njorku.com is one of Africa’s first job search engines that help thousands of job seekers daily find jobs in locations nearest to them. Mambe Churchill Nanje taught himself software engineering and is based in Buea, Cameroon.
He has this advice for startups in one of his interviews with Whoot Africa:
‘‘ To be successful in business, you must believe in yourself, be patient, extend your comfort zone, expect and be ready for failure, integrity and be very passionate in whatever you do… Business in general has a lot of obstacles but the main ones are finding the right people for the job and raising capital. I was lucky to be self-taught so I get to hire people and train them on the job. I also was opportune to make a lot of friends that trusted me and overtime they gave me loans and financing opportunities to continue with my ventures.’’
Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder Huffington Post
The Greek-American Arianna is co-founder of The Huffington Post and also the author of the New York Times best-seller The Sleep Revolution. She has stepped down as Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post to pursue her new wellness startup, Thrive Global. Her business advice for entrepreneurs who want to start a business for the first time is:
“If you’re going to start a business, you need to really love it, because not everybody is going to love it. When The Huffington Post was first launched in 2005, there were so many detractors. I remember a critic who wrote that The Huffington Post was an unsurvivable failure.”
“When you get reviews like that and detractors like that, you have to really believe in your product. When you really believe in your product, you are willing to deal with all the naysayers and persevere.”
The founder of WPBeginner, Optinmonster and several more successful online businesses, who has also learned so much in business in his 25 years as an entrepreneur has this advice for budding startup owners:
“Often new entrepreneurs wait too long to put their product out in the market. With limited resources at hand, its crucial that you get an MVP out ASAP and start getting traction. Take the user’s feedback to iterate and improve your products.”
“Not launching fast enough is a mistake you simply can’t afford to make. If you want to get an edge over others, launch now!”
Sujan is the co-founder of the content marketing agency, Web Profits. Here’s his best business advice for first-time entrepreneurs who want to start a business today:
“The most painful mistake I see inexperienced entrepreneurs make is copying or doing the same things that successful entrepreneurs have done, expecting similar results. What first-time entrepreneurs don’t realize is that the world is not a vacuum and there’s more going on behind the scenes than it appears. There’s much more effort that has gone into creating the success they see on the surface, and there’s no guarantee that a particular tactic or strategy will be successful for everyone.”
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh a Lagos-based Lawyer with special focus on Business Law, Intellectual Property Rights, Entertainment and Technology Law. He is also an award-winning writer. Working for notable organisations so far has exposed him to some of industry best practices in business, finance strategies, law, dispute resolution and data analytics both in Nigeria and across the world.
