Kenya-based mobility marketplace BuuPass has raised USD 1.30 million in a pre-seed round led by Founders Factory Africa. The round also saw participation from Google Black Founders Fund, Gullit VC, Five35 VC, Artha India Ventures, FrontEnd Ventures, Adaverse, Renew Capital, Changecom, XA Network, Ajim Capital, and Daba Finance. 

According to the company, the fresh funds will be used for expanding into East African markets with a special focus on Kenya and Uganda since the company aims to increase its market share in these markets. 

Founded in 2016, BuuPass follows a B2B2C approach and provides fleet owners with a full-stack bus management system (‘BMS’) for managing their operations, inventory, and sales.

Anirudh A Damani, Director of Artha India Ventures, says, “The African continent is fast emerging as a startup innovation hotbed. The African ecosystem is churning out many unique investment opportunities that will disrupt the market across sectors. Artha India Ventures is taking an early bet to back potential category winners with immense promise. In that vein, BuuPass has taken the lead in building digital rails for Africa’s intercity transport infrastructure. Based on Artha’s success in navigating this digitization play in India, we are confident that BuuPass will grow rapidly into a market leader.”

BuuPass claims that it has over 1,200 vehicles registered on its platform from over 25 bus companies. Through its partnership with Safaricom (or M-Pesa), the company is the sole technology provider for online railway ticket booking in Kenya and generated a GMV of USD 30 million in CY 2022. It also claims that it processes nearly 12,000 transactions daily.

Wyclife Omondi, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, BuuPass, says, “Over 9 million travelers have saved time and money by buying their tickets from the comfort of their homes. Additionally, our bus operators have seen a significant decrease in cash leakages and increased revenue from online bookings. 80 per cent of our clients come through referrals, demonstrating that our focus on customer satisfaction is yielding fruit. We can customize the technology for most businesses, give on-demand support, and provide USSD functionality."