Swvl Acquires Transportation Startup Urbvan for US$82 Million

Nasdaq-listed transportation startup Swvl Holdings Corp. acquired Mexico’s Urbvan for US$82 million. With this transaction, the company expands its presence to 164 cities in 22 countries, boosting its growth in Latin America, where it already has a presence in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile.

“Thanks to this merger, Urbvan becomes a global company,” Joao Matos Albino, founder and co-CEO of Urbvan told Contxto. “It allows us to take our solution to the next level and to be able to provide better technological proposals and more complete services.”

For his part, Swvl founder and CEO Mostafa Kandil noted that Ubvan and Swvl are very similar in their business model and that both were born on the same principles: to bring a solution that covers the inefficiencies of traditional transportation in many parts of the world. 

The benefits of the synergy between Swvl and Urbvan

With the acquisition of the Mexican company, Swvl will have access to the 18 cities in Mexico where Urbvan already has a presence, as well as to the urban and interurban routes where it operates (UrbvanCity and UrbvanTravel), to services for companies (UrbvanTeams) and also to on-demand private transportation coverage (UrvbanRental).

Urbvan and Swvl aim to provide a safer, faster, smarter, and more affordable transportation experience for users, no matter where they live.

<img class=”wp-image-72468 size-full” src=”https://contxto.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Joao-Matos-Renato-Picard_CEOS-Urbvan.jpg” alt=”” width=”2560″ height=”1707″ /> Joao Matos and Renato Picard, Urbvan founders (Photo: Urbvan)

This transaction allows Urbvan to leverage Swvl’s global offering to scale the platform both in the region and beyond. “The merger with Swvl allows us to strengthen our technology stack and therefore optimize our operations,” said Joao Matos.

The CEO also mentioned that this synergy with Swvl will lead them to offer a more complete and extensive service that covers many other cities. With this, they want to produce a much more profound impact on the forms of urban mobility in Mexico and Latin America and reduce the carbon footprint.

He added that this acquisition implies growth for both firms and that Urbvan will keep its current managers (Joao Matos Albino and Renato Picard) and business verticals (UrbvanCity, UrbvanTravel, UrbvanTeams, and UrvbanRenta). “Our services and benefits will improve, expand and impact many new cities,” he said.

This is not Swvl’s first acquisition to grow its business, with annual revenues of US$16.3 million and a gross revenue CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 138% between 2017 and 2021. Its most recent acquisitions were Volt Lines, door2door, Viapool, and Shotl.

For its part, Urbvan has raised more than US$11 million from large funds in Latin America, such as Kaszek Ventures, Angel Ventures, DILA Capital, Mountain Nazca, Capria, and Liil Ventures.