Nigerian mobility startup, Treepz closes $2.8m seed, acquires Ugandan bus company, Ugabus
Treepz, a Nigerian shared mobility startup has announced the close of its seed round at $2.8 million after about 3 months. The startup also announced its expansion to Uganda with the acquisition of Ugandan bus company, Ugabus.
According to Treepz, Ugabus, which will be rebranded by Treepz Uganda on December 1, presently has 70% of the country’s bus operators on its platform, with over 50,000 clients using the service to travel between Ugandan cities.
“Everyone at Treepz is excited to welcome the team at Ugabus to the Treepz family. This has been in the works for some time, along with our deal that happened in Ghana a few months ago, and so we are really happy about closing the deal successfully. East Africa is an exciting target for Treepz and from Uganda, we would work with this new team led by Hakiza in Uganda to explore our growth plans across the neighboring countries as we aim towards building the largest shared mobility platform in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Onyeka Akumah, CEO and Co-founder of Treepz said.
After getting accepted into the Techstars Toronto Accelerator program earlier this year, the startup secured $1.2 million in a seed funding round and announced its acquisition of Ghanaian startup, Stabus. This move was in furtherance of its pan African expansion ambition.
Today, Treepz has brought the seed round to a close with the rise of an additional $1.6 million in seed funding with new investors coming on board.
The extension seed round saw participation from Japan-based Uncovered Fund, Dubai-based Blanford Capital and Jonomi Capital, and Egypt-based Jedar Capital, addition to the seed funding, Treepz also recently received funds from Google’s African Investment Fund, which the startup will use to aggressively expand its on-demand ride-sharing and intercity bus ticketing services in Africa.
Founded in 2019, Treepz, formerly known as Plentywaka until its September rebrand, operates a digital platform allowing passengers to book daily rides along fixed routes. The startup also acts as an aggregator for bus travel companies across 21 cities in Nigeria, allowing transport operators to replace manual servicing and ticketing with digitalized offerings and services.
Launched in 2016, Ugabus currently has 70 percent of all bus operators in the East African country on its platform, with in-built mobile money technology for easy payments. The exact terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Ugabus will now be renamed Treepz Uganda and the startup’s CEO Ronald Hakiza will become Uganda’s country manager for Treepz.
Takuma Terakubo, CEO and general partner of Uncovered Fund, said Treepz had impressed his team with its “remarkable traction” in the latter part of the year and said the startup was poised for even further expansion.
“Treepz is building the most important mobility infrastructure in Africa’s megacities. The development of public transportation is essential in African countries where urbanization is advancing. We look forward to their building the infrastructure for people’s mobility through digital value. As a Japanese VC who places importance on the mobility industry, we would like to provide a lot of value to them,” he said.