Google invests in Safeboda to accelerate its expansion in Nigeria and Uganda
Google invests in Safeboda to accelerate its expansion in Nigeria and Uganda
Announcing its first investment from the Africa Investment Fund, which was launched in October at Google for Africa by Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, Google has announced its first investment from the Africa Investment Fund. It was decided to invest the undisclosed sum in Uganda's Safeboda, a bike-hailing startup.
In addition to GoVentures (formerly GoJek), Allianz X, Unbound, Beenext, and Justin Kan, Safeboda is backed by a number of other investors. Safety Boda's growth in Uganda and Nigeria, according to Google, will be aided by the investment, which will allow the company to scale its transportation-focused app in order to provide new payment and financial services to its growing customer base of passengers, drivers, and merchants.
Ricky Rapa Thomson, one of the company's co-founders, expressed his thoughts on the investment:
"In addition to being excited to welcome Google to their community, SafeBoda is looking forward to continuing to drive innovation in informal transportation and payments in the Boda Boda (motorcycle taxi driver in East Africa) and okada (motorcycle taxi driver in West Africa) industries. A former Boda driver in Kampala, I understand that we are the lifeblood of Africa's cities, and that we are a major driving force in the continent's economic development. SafeBoda is overjoyed that leading global corporations such as Google recognize the importance of assisting start-ups in their pursuit of these goals and have committed to assisting them."
Founded in 2017, SafeBoda is a mobile application that connects passengers with a community of safer and trusted drivers. As a result of this growth, SafeBoda now serves more than 1 million customers, and its transportation-focused super app has expanded to include services such as parcel delivery, food and shopping as well as payments, savings and other financial products and services.
It is part of Google's larger plan to invest $1 billion in Africa over the next five years to support the continent's digital transformation, which includes the Africa Investment Fund. For the next three years, the technology behemoth will invest $50 million in selected startups and provide them with access to Google's employees, network, and technologies in order to assist them in developing products that have a positive impact on their communities.
To date, Google has trained more than 6 million people in 25 African countries, with more than 60% of participants reporting increased career and/or business opportunities as a result of their training. Aside from that, Google has invested more than $16 million in more than 50 nonprofit organizations across Africa, enabling hundreds of millions of Africans to connect to the internet for the first time through the Android platform.
A statement from Nitin Gajria, the Managing Director of Google in Africa, expressed his delight at the company's decision to invest in the continent. As he put it himself:
"Our $50 million Africa Investment Fund, which we announced two months ago, has made its first investment, and I am overjoyed to be able to announce it. This is part of our ongoing commitment to African technology startups, which we have stated previously. African young developers and entrepreneurs, I believe, are the best-equipped group of people to deal with the continent's most pressing problems. We are looking forward to announcing additional investments in additional startups in the near term."
Safeboda is a company that operates in Uganda as well as the Nigerian city of Ibadan. The Nigerian bike-hailing startup announced last year that it had reached the milestone of 100,000 rides in the country. This achievement comes less than three months after the startup's operations in Ibadan were officially launched. In addition, it announced that it would cease operations in Kenya on November 27, 2020, effective immediately.
SafeBoda has decided to close its operations in Kenya after two years in the country. The East African country launched the ride-hailing startup in 2018, bringing on more than 4,000 Bodas and completing millions of rides in the process.
