BuuPass, a digital bus ticketing company, has raised $1.3m in pre-seed round to expand its transport solutions across East Africa. The new funding was raised from Founders Factory Africa, FrontEnd Ventures, Adaverse, Gullit, Five35, Renew Capital, Changecom, XA Network, Ajim Capital, Artha Ventures, Daba Finance, Google Black Founders Fund, and several angel investors.
The company plans to utilize the funds to first scale in Kenya and Uganda, before exploring other markets. The company founded in 2016 by Wycliffe Omondi and Sonia Kabra, and initially operated as Magic Bus Ticketing. Back then, BuuPass was a B2C company, providing a digital ticketing platform for bus companies. According to the founders., most bus companies were still using manual ticketing, and many weren’t ready to adopt the company’s technology, forcing them to change their model.
BuuPass then developed a B2B2CC platform, proving bus companies with a bus management system where they are able to control their fleet, sales, and inventory. It then connects them with a marketplace where passengers can book tickets and compare prices of different bus operators via a mobile app, website, and USSD.
The company says it processes about 12,000 transactions per day across its booking channels, and has recorded over 9 million ticket sales so far. Its gross merchandise value was slightly over $30 million in 2022.
It supports a total fleet size of 1,200 vehicles from over 25 bus companies, including one of the oldest, Easy Coach. Travelers can also book flight and train tickets, especially bringing convenience to travelers using the country’s railway network for intercity travel. It also partnered with Safaricom M-Pesa to facilitate train bookings in 2017.
“The funding will enable us to invest in growth activities, increasing our market share in East Africa, with a focus on Kenya and Uganda. We will hire a team especially on the growth side, and technology experts so that we can build systems for scale because our plan is to become a pan-African infrastructure for long distance transportation,” said co-CEO, Sonia Kabra.