CanGo, the on demand services company with a technology office in Nairobi, Kenya and current operations in Kinshasa and Kigali has launched an interconnected on demand services together in a single smartphone application aimed at consumers within the central African regional market. Sources at CanGo say that the SuperApp is poised to transform lives across the Central African region as it will enable users to achieve so many options at a go like hailing a motorcycle taxi, order food, make orders from a supermarket and so many other things
CanGo’s initial plan was to design an app-based motorcycle taxi model, but considering best practices in larger markets, it had to adjust to focus on even bigger plans. Speaking on the development CCo-founder Barret Nashsaid that “what we realised is we’ve built a logistics network [being that] motorcycles can move anything — people, pizza, or a bag of potatoes. Users have multiple services they want to benefit from, so we started thinking of this as a Super App by the influence of a company called Gojek in Indonesia.” CanGo’s goal he added is to use motorcycle-hailing to build its network after which it will release additional verticals into the same mobile application. The logistics backbone is expected to ultimately make incorporating more revenue streams seamless.
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According to Nash, the platform currently boasts of 165 riders and 12,000 registered users, 1,250 of which actively engage rides and other logistics services weekly. All these are in spite of the country’s strong bureaucratic system which could inhibit startup growth, and people’s slow culture of transiting to new innovations. However, he hopes that tech penetration will soon be higher than what obtains now in the country. “Over another year, we’re working to scale in Kinshasa, by growing 20 to 30 times over what our current volume is. We’ll also include around eight new service verticals on the app,” Nash affirms.
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Geographical expansion should follow, as he believes that at that stage, CanGo would have grown strong enough to withstand competition in Kinshasa. This will include additional cities in DRC (Lubumbashi and Goma) and other Central African nations (Angola and Rwanda). Ultimately, it is expected that CanGo’s first-comer advantage would make it scale fast while the region is still in the pioneering years in tech adoption.
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“What we’re doing is providing a safe, convenient, and affordable transportation solution. We allow you to move around the city with ease and also bring the best of the city’s services to you,” says Nash.
The startup’s model has riders register their bikes on the platform, get onboarded after verification, and then linked with customers through the mobile application. And as is common with ride-hailing platforms, CanGo riders pay a commission on every trip. “We take a commission for every trip/order. For ride-hailing, it’s 20%, while for other on-demand services, it’s about 5% which varies based on the product moved. Although 50% of our rides are discounted at the moment,” explains Barrett.
Although bootstrapped in its early days, at no point has funding stalled the startup’s growth, and this is for an obvious reason — CanGo is operating within an untapped ecosystem in the region. Getting into the SOSV accelerator program in Ireland in its first year largely set the business on the right track. And it has since survived on revenue and venture capital funds.
Earlier this year, CanGo closed a $1.1million funding raise, led by Battery Road Digital Holdings; Silicon Valley VC, TRUCKS; SOSV; Dubai-based firm, HALA; ZEPHYR ACORN, and PAN Group. This round has bolstered the startup’s confidence to plan further expansion into other Central Africa nations while also attracting more investors’ interest.
Kelechi Deca
Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry