Swvl acquires Mexican transport startup Urbvan

“Thanks to this merger, Urbvan becomes a global company,” Joao Matos Albino, founder and co-CEO of Urbvan, was quoted by Mexican media as saying.

“It allows us to take our solution to the next level and to be able to provide better technological proposals and more complete services.” Dubai-based Swvl is a global provider of transformative tech-enabled mass transit solutions, offering intercity, intracity, B2B and B2G transportation across some 135 cities in 20 countries.

Swvl founder and CEO Mostafa Kandil said that Urbvan 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. For his part, Youssef Salem, Swvl’s CFO, said, "the acquisition of Urbvan contributes towards all the key objectives of our recently announced portfolio optimization plan: opportunity to enhance margins, turn cash flow positive in 2023, focus on high profitability segments TaaS and SaaS, expand in higher ticket fare markets and extract more value from our proprietary technology stack”.

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 its UrbvanCity and UrbvanTravel services.

Swvl was advised by Mexican law firm Pérez Correa González (PCG) on its acquisition of Urbvan, with a team led by private capital partner Fernando Eraña, and who was assisted by associates Eduardo Yrigoyen and Carlos Ugalde. Pérez Correa González is a Mexico City-based law firm comprised of a group of highly qualified and successful lawyers from the most prestigious universities in Mexico, the United States and Europe who have experience working in top-tier international firms.

The firm specializes in a wide range of practice areas that include banking and finance, bankruptcy, corporate, M&As, real estate, litigation, arbitration, fintech, private equity and intellectual property.