Founded in November 2014 in Kampala by Alastair Sussock, Ricky Thompson, Maxime Dieudonne and Clarisse Iribagiza of HeHe Labs, SafeBoda wants to be the ‘Uber’ of motor cycle taxis in East Africa.
According to the team, “We believe that a market-based solution that incentivizes road safety can prevent injury and death and significantly reduce public health costs. We are a community of SafeBoda drivers and responsible passengers using a mobile application to find each other. We pick best motor drivers in the city and train them on good customer service and safety.
They are equipped with best gear….clean helmets, mechanically sound bike, …and enough technology to keep you in excellent hands.”
Using either an Android or iOS app, SafeBoda passengers can hail SafeBoda drivers who have been trained to provide a safe and a secure means of transport to people’s homes and places of work in a move to help reduce road accidents, curb casualities, deaths, and the costs of footing expensive hospital bills. Apart form safety, SafeBoda is also a convenient means to get to your destination.
Starting in Kampala, SafeBoda aims to bring sanity to roads in Africa then India by training riders who are increasingly becoming more and more unpopular on our roads in several cities in Africa. SafaBoda trains the riders on road safety, bike repair and maintenance, basic first aid and customer service. SafeBoda gives its riders two helmets for both the passenger and rider and a reflective jacket embedded with the rider’s name for safety of the passengers.
Just like Uber, passengers download the app, hail a rider then they head to the passengers destination. The passengers then pay in cash or mobile money to the drivers.
The firm says it’s working on a mobile payment system to help it capture the riders payment revenue well and as well help in rating the riders. At the moment, SafeBoda is looking for investors from the VC and social venture community to raise funds to scale its operations.For women who are cautious of their hair, SafeBoda has hairnets instead of helmets everytime a lady passenger shows up. The firm is encouraging riders to use helmets, a security precation most riders neglect. The OutBox-incubated startup aims to reach 3000 riders by year end to help increase passenger safety in Kampala.