2018-11-22
 
Egypt's Swifel, the global online mass transit company, plans to expand and enter the Southeast Asian market next year after completing what it described as the largest funding round for an emerging technology company in Egypt.
 
Founded in April 2017, Swifl is a mass transit bus service that allows passengers to book and pay for the company's application on mobile phones.
 
The application uses the location of the passenger and the destination to determine the shortest time possible for the flight based on the nearest bus stop moving in specific routes.
 
Swift has raised "tens of millions of dollars" in the second financing phase of existing and new investors, Mustafa Kandil, the company's chief executive and co-founder, told Reuters by telephone.
 
Kandil declined to say how much the company had exacted, but said the second funding stage meant the company was now close to $ 100 million.
 
Kandil said Swift plans to launch services in Manila in the first quarter of next year, followed by other cities in the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand.
 
He said the company is targeting seven major cities in emerging markets by the end of 2019.
 
"We see ourselves more than just a player in emerging markets so we want to expand beyond the Middle East."
 
More than one million users of the Swifl application, which have yet to make a profit, travel in more than 200 routes in Cairo and Alexandria. The application handles hundreds of thousands of bookings per month and has more than 1,000 registered buses.
 
The company said it would use part of the second phase funding to open a research and development center in Berlin.