The Kenyan company BuuPass, which was started in 2016 and sells digital tickets for bus transportation has said that it has sold more than 10 million tickets through its website.
Recently, the company held a networking event with some of its partners and used the chance to talk about some of its most important achievements.
Key industry players like Neddy Munyasi, Commercial Vertical Lead for Multinational Corporations at SAFARICOM, and Nashon Kondiwa, Director of ICT and Innovation at the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA), were at the networking event.
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About BuuPass founder
Wycliffe Omondi and Sonia Kabra started the business, which was first called Magic Bus Ticketing. Back then, BuuPass was a business-to-consumer company that helped bus companies sell digital tickets. According to the company’s founders, most bus companies were still using paper tickets, and many weren’t ready to use the company’s technology, so they had to change their business plan.
Then, BuuPass built a B2B2CC platform that gives bus companies a bus management system that lets them keep track of their fleet, sales, and supplies. It then links them to a marketplace where people can book tickets and compare prices from different bus companies using a mobile app, a website, or USSD.
BuuPass says that across all of its booking platforms, it handles almost 12,000 transactions per day. The startup also manages a fleet of 1,200 cars from 25 different bus companies.
“Since we started using the online ticketing platform by BuuPass, our business has been very easy to run, especially on the management side,” said Lazarus Thuo, Director of Greenline Safaris, who was also at the event.
“I just need my phone to keep an eye on things wherever I am in the country.” It’s also easy to keep records because it’s easy to get documents and keep track of staff, drivers, income, and expenses, he says.
Nashon Kondiwa of the NTSA praised BuuPass at the event. He said that the government agency is using data analytics to keep an eye on how drivers behave in the country.
“For example, if you know where your bus is, who is driving it, and if they are a good or bad driver, you will be able to estimate the cost of maintenance for that bus,” he said.
“People who use technology combined with data analytics can cut costs by an estimated 30%,” Nashon also said.
This year, BuuPass raised $1.3 million in a pre-seed round to grow its transport services across East Africa. The new funding came from Founders Factory Africa, FrontEnd Ventures, Adverse, Gullit, Five35, Renew Capital, Changecom, XA Network, Ajim Capital, Artha Ventures, Daba Finance, Google Black Founders Fund, and several individual investors.