Kenyan B2B2C marketplace BuuPass has secured $1.3 million in pre-seed funding to fuel its regional expansion plans. The platform offers bus operators a bus management system (BMS) to help manage their operations, inventory, and sales and reduce cash leakages. BuuPass also provides operators access to data for analysis and enables them to boost sales via online bookings. The funding round was participated in by Founders Factory Africa, FrontEnd Ventures, Adaverse, and others. BuuPass aims to close the gap between bus companies and passengers while fostering order in the African transport industry. The funds will be used for hiring a growth team and technology experts to enable the company to build systems for scale. The company presently supports a total fleet size of 1,200 vehicles from over 25 bus companies and has processed over nine million ticket sales.
BuuPass was launched in 2016 as Magic Bus Ticketing by Sonia Kabra and Wycliffe Omondi, who won the Bill Clinton-supported $1 million Hult Prize. The platform collaborates with Kenya’s top bus, train, and aircraft companies to offer clients the ease of online reservations. Customers can browse, compare, and purchase tickets through various platforms, such as websites, mobile apps, and USSD codes. In 2019, the company partnered with Safaricom, the parent company of the mobile money service M-Pesa, to facilitate train bookings. The partnership allowed the company to land the Kenya Railways deal, validating its solution and capacity to build solutions for high-value transactions.
The transportation industry in Africa faces several issues, including traffic congestion and the lack of order in the commuter system. Several fintech companies and individuals have sought to address these problems with digital means. In Nigeria, Interswitch, an integrated payments, and digital commerce company, has planned to contribute to the digitization of transportation. Ride-hailing startups, such as SafeBoda and Easy Matutu, have also aimed to bring order to the chaotic system. BuuPass aims to provide a solution to the Kenyan decentralized transportation system and expand to other parts of Eastern Africa with its latest funding.
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