Online bus, train and flight ticketing platform, BuuPass has raised a $1.3 million pre-seed funding to further digitize the transport sector while making processes seamless.
BuuPass will invest in growth activities as the fund aids its market share increase in East Africa, with a focus on Kenya and Uganda. The company will also leverage the fund to expand its team including growth and technology experts who will focus on building systems for scale as BuuPass plans to become a pan-African infrastructure for long distance transportation.
Investors in the pre-seed round were 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.
Founded by Sonia Kabra and Wycliffe Omondi in 2016, BuuPass is a B2B2C full-stack marketplace that provides a bus management system (BMS) for operators to manage operations, inventory and sales. With this, they can manage their fleets and businesses better, gain access to data they can use to draw insights from, and reduce cash leakages, while increasing their sales from online bookings. It also connects them to its marketplace, where passengers search, compare and book their tickets using different channels, including websites, apps, and USSD codes.
The company affirms processing 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. Supporting a total fleet size of 1,200 vehicles from over 25 bus companies, including one of the oldest, Easy Coach, BuuPass enables travelers book flight and train tickets, incorporating convenience and affordability in the system.
