- BuuPass provides its users with a Bus management system for managing their operations, inventory and sales.
- Over the years BuuPass online booking has amassed a total fleet size of 1200 vehicles from over 25 bus companies.
- Africa’s transport service greatly benefits from BuuPass, allowing smooth operations and services.
Africa’s digital economy has opened doors for every kind of innovation. From shopping through your phone to ordering meals, Africa’s digital revolution has taken the world by storm. Buupass is an online ticket booking platform that has steadily taken over as Kenya’s transport service. On February 13th 2023, BuuPass announced its intent to expand as it raised Sh162.8 million($1.3 million). This will essentially expand its operation from Kenya to Uganda.
BuuPass has taken the initiative and steadily used Africa’s Digital Economy and the Mobile Industry in Kenya to stretch its services beyond everyone’s expectations.
For those who love travelling through the roads of Kenya and Uganda, it is more likely they have come across Buupass, an online ticket booking platform. It is a standard platform mainly used to book and check available transport without going to the bus station. BuuPass online booking achieved little traction during its initial start. However, like all aspects of Africa’s digital economy, the pandemic period shed light on this revolutionary concept.
While college students participated in the Hult Prize Challenge, Iman Cooper and Sonia Kabra first considered the idea. Later, Wycliffe Omondi joined them and the three had a chance to travel to different African countries. During their exploits, they noticed the relatively poor quality of African transport services. The long waiting lines that did not guarantee success plagued many transport services during their time.
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While pondering this issue, the three finally thought of a way to make transport more accessible to people. This spurred them to participate in the first round of the competition. Unfortunately, the first iteration of Buupass had plenty of gaps that needed improvement to proceed to the next round. What seemed a moment of failure to others sparked the minds of its founders, who got back to the drawing board and later developed what is today one of the leading ticket booking platforms in Kenya.
Africa’s transport service greatly benefits from BuuPass, allowing smooth operations and services. In addition, it steadily expanded its domain and even forged a partnership with Safaricom. This partnership laced it at a significant trajectory in Kenya’s economy.
BuuPass Steady growth to expansion
Over the years, Buupass online booking utilized Africa’s Digital Economy and even added an SMS -based platform that allowed users to book a bus ticket outside of its app or access to the internet.
To expand its horizon beyond Kenya and Uganda, it received $1.3 million in pre-seed funding. This was possible through the aid of critical contributors within Africa’s Digital economy. They included; 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.
According to the founders, the funding will enable the ticket-booking platform to invest in growth activities and increase its overall market share in East Africa. They added that it would also focus on human capital since it desperately needs new and fresh minds within the company.
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From a technical perspective, BuuPass provides its users with a Bus management system for managing their operations, inventory and sales. It has a central base system that updates upon every entry, preventing double booking.
Over the years BuuPass online booking has amassed a total fleet size of 1200 vehicles from over 25 bus companies, its oldest contributor being Easy Coach.
Today, BuuPass online booking caters for flights and transport. It partners with the mobile money services M-pesa which has made things much easier to achieve this feat.
“Partnering with Safaricom enabled us to land the Kenya Railways (operators of the national train grid) deal. It validated our solution and capacity to build solutions for high-value transactions. It also enabled us to build trust in the market. The partnership helped us think about scale such that we have developed solutions capable of handling millions of transactions and providing a seamless experience for the end user. It’s been a great validation to prove our credibility in the market,” said Kabra.
