Kenya's BuuPass raises $1.3M funding to Digitize Public Transportation in East Africa

BuuPass, a Kenyan B2B2C full-stack marketplace for the public transport sector, is looking to increase its market share in East Africa, with a focus on Kenya and Uganda.

The company, which was founded seven years ago by Sonia Kabra and Wycliffe Omondi, who met in 2013 at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, has announced the raise of $1.3 million in pre-seed funding from various investors, including Founders Factory Africa, FrontEnd Ventures, and Google Black Founders Fund.

BuuPass provides bus operators with a bus management system (BMS) that helps manage operations, inventory, and sales. The BMS includes a point-of-sale solution and a parcel management module, allowing operators to manage their fleets and businesses more effectively, access data, reduce cash leakages, and increase sales from online bookings.

The platform currently processes about 12,000 transactions per day across its booking channels and has recorded over 9 million ticket sales, with a Gross Merchandise Value of slightly over $30 million in 2022.

With this latest funding, BuuPass plans to invest in growth activities and expand its team, hiring growth and technology experts to build systems for scale. The goal is to become a pan-African infrastructure for long-distance transportation.