Egyptian infrastructure management platform Pylon secures $19 million funding
In its first venture round, Egypt-based Pylon has successfully secured a seed round of $19 million.
US firm, Endure Capital led the round, which is backed by British International Investment (previously CDC Group), the UK government’s development finance organization. Cathexis Ventures, LoftyInc Capital, Khawarizmi Ventures, and numerous undisclosed angel investors are among the other participants in this round of investment.
Pylon is an infrastructure management platform that powers millions of smart meters in some of the world’s most populous areas. Bootstrapped in 2017 by Ahmed Ashour, CEO, and his co-founder and CTO Omar Radi, this is Pylon’s first venture round. The startup had earlier raised seed round of funding from Y Combinator, and other investors.
Headquartered in Giza, Pylon has operations in Egypt and the Philippines at the moment. It plans to use a portion of the initial investment to grow into additional emerging regions, such as Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
The market opportunity in the water and energy distribution area, according to Pylon, is worth more than $20 billion across ten emerging markets. Pylon claims to be profitable and has grown its revenues by 3.5x in 2021, by only focusing on one-fourth of that figure.
In addition to growing a successful company, the founders are concerned about how Pylon’s smart electricity grids contribute to environmental sustainability. Smart electricity networks can lower utilities’ carbon emissions by 25%, and Pylon is saving the earth one metering point at a time.
About the funding, Ahmed Ashour, Co-founder, and CEO of Pylon commented:
“We are delighted that our solution received such heightened interest and acclaim from a wide range of global investors. Our impact-driven vision of developing technology to better manage resources, eradicate inefficiencies, and remove pain points in the utilities sector raised a call-to-action and many responded.”
One of Pylon’s objectives is to reduce total CO2 emissions by one gigaton by 2035. Emerging markets lose nearly 45 million cubic meters of water every day. Pylon has the ability to cut this by up to 22%, supplying enough water to service more than 40 million people.
