Cape Town start-up based public transport start-up WhereIsMyTransport has raised 12M Rand (over $ 900,000) and launched an office in London in a global expansion move.
The oversubscribed £600 000 (approx ZAR 12 Million) seed round was led by location-based technology firm Infotech (part of the Mertech Group, a ZAR 3Billion private investment firm) with participation from Horizen Ventures and Goodwell Investments, a Dutch early-stage venture fund.
Wim van der Beek, founding Partner at Goodwell Investments has joined the Board of Directors. Tom Boardman, former CEO of Nedbank and chairman of Athena Capital, as well as a Kim Fennell, CEO of deCarta, an Uber technologies company, have both made personal investments.
“We’ve been fortunate to have a fantastic group of investors from key industries join us,” explains de Vries. “Their added expertise and experience will be crucial as we enter a new phase of product development and international expansion.”
WhereIsMyTransport is one of thirteen companies in the Knife Capital Incubator, Grindstone, and is a member of the Microsoft BizSpark Program. They recently won the Start-Up Tel Aviv competition in South Africa, and will represent the country at the Tel Aviv DLD Innovation festival and networking week in September. It was also named one of the Financial Times International Finalists for Transformative Information Technology, and their urban transport app Findmyway was named an African Climate Solver by the WWF.
In March, the firm launched Findmyway, an urban transportation and journey planner app for users in Tshwane, South Africa.
By moving to London, Vries says WhereIsMyTransport won’t stop serve developing cities in Africa but having an international base for operations makes it easier for the firm to reach other cities outside Africa. The expansion gives the firm more resources, credibility and access to venture capital needed to compete on a global scale.