BuuPass, a B2B2C full-stack marketplace, that provides operators with a bus management system (BMS) for managing their operations, inventory and sales has secuerd $1.3 million pre-seed funding from the 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.
BuuPass is a B2B2C full-stack marketplace for transport that is fixing the 60B USD broken value chain in the domestic transport (domestic bus, shuttle and train booking) sector in Sub Saharan Africa.
According co-CEO, Sonia Kabra,“the funding will enable us invest in growth activities, increasing our market share in East Africa, with a focus on Kenya and Uganda. We will hire a team especially on the growth side, and technology experts so that we can build systems for scale because our plan is to become a pan-African infrastructure for long distance transportation.”
Its Bus Management System includes a point-of-sale solution to capture transactions, and to provide access to a parcel management module.
The BMS also enables operators to 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.
BuuPass was co-founded by Sonia Kabra and Wycliffe Omondi in 2016.The company says it processes 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.
The company says it supports a total fleet size of 1,200 vehicles from over 25 bus companies, including one of the oldest, Easy Coach. Travelers can also book flight and train tickets, thus bringing convenience to travelers using the country’s railway network for intercity travel.
In 2017 BuuPass, in partnership with Safaricom, Kenyas leading telecommunications provider secured a contract to facilitate train bookings in Kenya.
