Pylon, an Egyptian infrastructure management platform for developing market water and energy utilities, has secured a seed round of $19 million.
The acquisition was led by Endure Capital of the United States and backed by British International Investment, the UK government’s development finance company. Among the participants are Cathexis Ventures, Loftyinc Ventures, Khawarizmi Ventures, and a number of unnamed angel investors.
Pylon is now active in Egypt and the Philippines. Pylon plans to use a portion of the initial investment to expand into other emerging markets, including Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
This is the company’s first venture capital round. According to CEO Ahmed Ashour and CTO Omar Radi, Pylon has been self-funded since 2017.
Ashour has worked in the metering and utilities industry for more than a decade, directing the installation of smart metering technologies, particularly hardware, for a number of organisations across Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
According to the CEO, Pylon tackles a variety of issues for water and distribution companies. For starters, they have a high proportion of outstanding debts, resulting in significant financial losses.
Second, they pay a high energy bill and must contend with water theft. Third, grid and network technical losses arise as a result of poor maintenance or law enforcement.
These three difficulties cause these organisations to lose 40% of their revenue, and as a result, they are unable to upgrade their solution or implement a smart infrastructure due to high costs.
Pylon creates solutions for water and electricity distribution companies to help them increase productivity and control costs. Hundreds of billions of dollars are lost each year in emerging economies, according to the firm. It has the potential to increase total revenues and top line by 50% for those utilities.
The software from Pylon collects data from the grids, analyzes it, and pinpoints supply chain theft and losses. It then automates the invoicing operations of the firms, similar to what telecom providers in these regions have done in the past.
Pylon claims to be able to help utility companies minimise losses by 8% while simultaneously raising their bottom line with no upfront costs.
According to the company, customers are not paid an upfront cost for the gear. On the other hand, its smart metering-as-a-service (SMaaS) approach makes it straightforward for cash-strapped utility companies to deploy its solution on a big scale.
Pylon’s revenues climbed by 3.5 times in 2021, and the company is profitable, according to the corporation. The creators are concerned about how Pylon’s smart electrical networks contribute to environmental sustainability, in addition to building a successful firm.