The acquisition of Stabus Ghana by Plentywaka, a shared mobility startup that offers commuters daily rides and road travel ticketing services, will further boost the company’s ambitious move of building the largest shared mobility platform on the African continent, starting with West Africa.
This is because Stabus, which was launched two years ago has displayed capacity by moving over 100,000 people in Accra, the capital city of Ghana through daily bus-stop to bus-stop transportation services, as well as providing staff bus solutions for multinationals like MTN Ghana and GB Foods.
Also, with the acquisition, the Plentywaka brand will be further spread as Stabus will now be known as Plentywaka Ghana with the mobility platform offering a range of low-cost and premium vehicles which includes cars, mini-vans and buses for public transportation.
The management of Plentywaka has yesterday announced the acquisition of the Ghana-based mobility startup. The announcement is coming on the heel of a $1.2M USD seed funding it secured only two months after successfully ending the Techstars Toronto Accelerator Program in July 2021.
“Plentywaka’s acquisition of Stabus is a firm statement about our commitment to grow and build the largest shared mobility startup in Africa, one country at a time,” said Plentywaka’s Co-Founder & CEO, Onyeka Akumah.
According to Onyeka Akumah, expanding into Ghana is just the beginning for the team as it aligns with its Pan-African expansion plan. He promised that Plentywaka is going to replicate its model across 6 other African countries within the next 2 years and will be looking for the right kind of investors and partners to join the ‘black and yellow’ movement to provide the best-in-class transportation service connecting cities and communities with technology across Africa.
He stated that in addition to the work Plentywaka has done in Ghana, the company is also happy about the progress it has made in Nigeria as well to scale Dailywaka service that provides bus-stop to bus-stop transportation service for thousands of commuters. “Today, we have moved close to half a million people and that’s a credit to the effort of my team, our heroes (a term used to describe Plentywaka drivers) and our investors who continue to believe and support our growth with their investments,” he added.
This investment in Plentywaka attracted a wide range of investors from Canada, the United States, China and Nigeria. The Xchange, a Toronto-based fund, led this seed round, while Techstars followed on their previous investment in Plentywaka to participate in the round as well. Other investors include SOSV, the most active VC globally in the angel/seed deal type and ShockVentures, a VC from the United States.
Nigerian investment firms who participated in the round include Argentil Capital Partners and ODBA & Co Ventures, an early-stage investor in Kuda Bank. There were also a couple of angel investors from Canada, the US and Africa who also participated in the seed round to give Plentywaka the much-needed boost to continue its impressive growth.
Meanwhile, Co-Founder of Stabus, Isidore Kpotufe will become the Country Manager of Plentywaka Ghana and will be joined by the current team of Stabus.
Despite suspending its operations for 5 months in 2020 as a result of the global pandemic, Plentywaka has still been able to get 960 vehicles registered on its platform and help its riders commute more than 480,000 times in less than 2 years.
