Egyptian Utilities Management Startup Pylon Raises $19M Seed Round

In what has been touted as one of Egypt’s largest ever seed rounds, infrastructure management platform, Pylon, has announced that it has raised a $19 million investment. Comprised of both equity and debt, the round has been led by the UK’s development finance institution, CDC, with participation from US-based Cathexis Ventures and Loftyinc Ventures, and KSA’s Khwarizmi Ventures, as well as unnamed angel investors. 

Founded in 2017 by Ahmed Ashour and Omar Radi, Pylon offers subscription-based Smart Metering for electricity and water companies in emerging markets, providing a tailored end-to-end software solution that can be adapted to both old and new technologies. The company aims to reduce operational inefficiencies, improve revenue collection, and achieve a more efficient environmental footprint, with no cost upfront for its clients. It’s claimed that Pylon can help utility companies increase their topline by up to 40%, while also capturing losses and uncollected revenues, as it looks to democratise smart grid infrastructure to these types of companies in emerging markets. 

Beyond that, Pylon is also looking to do its part to ‘save the planet’, with smart electricity grids potentially reducing carbon emissions by up to 25% and water losses by 22%. One of Pylon’s goals is to achieve a CO2 emissions reduction of 1 gigaton by 2035, a goal that continues to garner attention, not least from the famed Y-Combinator, which invested in the company as part of the accelerator’s summer 2021 cohort.

The startup is currently working with several companies across two continents, who have deployed more than one million end-points of Pylon’s tech across 15 distribution companies. Pylon is also looking to reach three million smart metering points by 2023, an ambitious goal that would require that it push a 4x YoY growth. Pylon’s ambitions lie in geographical growth, too, with the investment set to be channelled into further expansion plans across South East Asia, Africa and Latin America in the pipeline.