Pylon gets $19M to scale software for utilities

Pylon, an Egyptian infrastructure management platform for emerging market water and energy utilities, has raised a seed round of $19 million.

Endure Capital, based in the United States, led the transaction, which was funded by British International Investment (previously CDC Group), the UK government’s development finance organization. Cathexis Ventures, Loftyinc Ventures, Khawarizmi Ventures, and numerous undisclosed angel investors are among the participants.

Pylon has operations in Egypt and the Philippines at the moment. Pylon will use a portion of the initial investment to grow into additional emerging regions, such as Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa. This is the company’s first venture round of funding.

Pylon has been bootstrapped since 2017, according to CEO Ahmed Ashour and CTO Omar Radi. For more than a decade, Ashour worked in the metering and utility industry, leading the deployment of smart metering technologies — mainly hardware — for a variety of organizations throughout Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.