Booking platforms are developing in the market to bridge the gap, notably BuuPass, which is actively attempting to establish order in the fragmented and competitive sector by assisting operators in digitizing their operations.
The firm, which was established in Kenya seven years ago, intends to first scale in Kenya and Uganda before expanding into other markets.
It has received $1.3 million in pre-seed funding from the 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 Kenyan public transportation sector is mostly conventional, and the bulk of operators, particularly those in road travel, still need passengers to physically book tickets at their offices, even when making ahead trip plans. Others do not allow for seat reservations.
Sonia Kabra, co-CEO of BuuPass, which she co-founded with Wycliffe Omondi in 2016, stated that the money will allow the company to invest in growth activities, boosting its market share in East Africa, with an emphasis on Kenya and Uganda.
BuuPass will hire staff, particularly on the growth side, as well as technical professionals, in order to construct systems for scale, with the goal of becoming a pan-African infrastructure for long-distance transportation.
BuuPass, a B2B2C full-stack marketplace, offers operators a bus management system (BMS) to help them manage their operations, inventory, and sales. It then connects them to its marketplace, where travelers can search, compare, and book tickets using various channels including websites, applications, and USSD codes.
The BMS contains a point-of-sale solution for transaction capturing as well as access to a parcel management module.
BuuPass claims that operators who use their BMS can better manage their fleets and operations and have access to data from which to draw insights, eliminate cash leakages, and increase their sales via online bookings.
According to the company, it processes over 12,000 transactions every day throughout its booking platforms and has sold over 9 million tickets to date. In 2022, its Gross Merchandise Value was slightly more than $30 million.
It serves a total fleet of 1,200 vehicles from over 25 bus operators, including Easy Coach, one of the oldest. Travelers can also book aircraft and train tickets, which is especially useful for those who use the country’s railway network for intercity travel.
In Kenya, BuuPass won a contract to simplify railway bookings in 2017 in collaboration with Safaricom, the parent firm of mobile money provider M-Pesa.
“Partnering with Safaricom enabled us to land the Kenya Railways (operators of the national train grid) business and verified our technology and capacity to design solutions for large value transactions.
It also helped us build market trust and think about scale, allowing us to develop systems capable of processing millions of transactions while offering a seamless experience for the end user. It’s been a tremendous affirmation for us to prove our market credibility,” said Kabra.
Sonia and Omondi met in 2013 at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, US, and their passion for entrepreneurship, as well as their desire to provide solutions for the transportation sector in emerging nations, led them to co-found the college’s first entrepreneurship club, as well as BuuPass.
They earned the $1 million Hult Prize in 2016, a grant supported by Bill Clinton that enabled them to launch BuuPass (then known as Magic Bus Ticketing) in Kenya as a B2C platform.
Nevertheless, they rapidly recognized that the idea was unworkable because most bus companies’ operations were primarily manual, necessitating the requirement to prioritize digitization.
Don’t miss important articles during the week. Subscribe to techbuild.africa weekly digest for updates.
