Mobility platform Treepz, formerly known as PlentyWaka has raised a total of $2.8 million in its seed round after an extension round that saw the company raise $1.5 million. In August, the mobility company raised $1.3 million in an original seed round. That same August, the company acquired Stabus and announced that the funds it acquired from the seed round will be used to handle the growing amount of work, as well as increase and improve its services and its general business operations.
The company had an extension of its seed round so as to raise more funds needed to fuel its expansion plans. The seed extension round saw the participation of investors such as Japan’s Uncovered Fund, Egypt’s Jedar Capital as well as Dubai-based Blanford Capital and Jonomi Capital. After raising the initial seed round, the company acquired Ghana’s Stabus and had eyes on other African territories. Following the seed extension round, the company has acquired Ugabus. Ugabus is an Ugandan mobility company that aggregates inter-city bus operators. The terms of the deal between Treepz and Ugabus were not disclosed but according to co-founder and CEO of Treepz, Onyeka Akumah, the acquisition was funded with what was raised from the seed extension round. Following the extension round, the total amount of money raised by Treepz in its seed round is $2.8 million.
Treepz acquisition of Ugabus will be its emergence into the East African market. Ugabus, starting December 1 will be known as Treepz Uganda. The acquisition of Ugabus gives Treepz complete ownership of all its operations and staff. Ugabus is a huge contender in the country and has about 70 percent of Uganda’s bus operators on its platform, as well as a customer base of 50,000 using the platform to travel to and from cities in the country.
Speaking about the move, the mobility company’s CEO said that “We’ll be able to service most of the major cities in Uganda, but the good thing about East Africa is they have very seamless borders between the countries, so it’s easy to move from Uganda to Rwanda, Uganda to Tanzania, Tanzania to Burundi, and so forth”.
Explaining further, he added that “the plan is to extend into Tanzania and Burundi first. Those are places we will pay attention to next year. We are also really interested in Ethiopia. So the same thing we were doing with Ghana, across Ghana to Togo and Benin from Nigeria for the West African region. So next year, we will consolidate on our positions on East Africa and West Africa and start collapsing into on in Sub Saharan Africa.”
A statement from the CEO and general partner of Uncovered Fund, Takuma Terakubo, read “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.”
According to Treepz’s CEO, the trust bus operators and even users have in its services continue to increase as time goes by. “Bus operators are starting to see us as a technology partner against the competition. The Treepz technology as an inventory management system can now be used by the bus operators to power their different systems. And that in turn, turns out to be a tremendous opportunity for growth for us. So we see a future where we aggregate bus operators from city to city, and we also work with bus operators within cities. It just grows the numbers over time around the transactions that happen on our platform”.
Treepz, apart from the money it raised from its seed funding round recently received funds from Google’s Africa Investment Fund. The company will use this fund for expanding its on-demand and inter-city bus ticketing services. Treepz plans on expanding to the whole of Africa, building a strong and reliable network, before it starts out on its dream of a global expansion.
