Damilola Olokesusi - Afrikan Heroes

Out From Years Of Bootstrapping, Nigerian Female-led Mobility Startup Shuttlers Raises $1.6m

November 16, 2021

The story of Nigerian mobility startup, Shuttlers, will remain a lesson for startups in Africa seeking to boostrap, against the odds. After several years of bootstrapping ,the startup which is a tech-enabled scheduled bus sharing” service led by a female founder, has attracted the attention of investors who have poured in $1.6 million in seed funding.

The round was led by the Chicago and Africa-focused investment firm, VestedWorld. Local companies as well as investors, including fintech unicorn Interswitch, Africa-focused VCs Rising Tide Africa, Launch Africa, EchoVC, Consonance Investment, CcHub Syndicate, CMC 21 & Alsa, ShEquity, Five35, Sakore and Nikky Taurus also took part in this round of investment.

“We were not actively looking for investors; however, there is now more attention in the shared mobility industry because of companies like SWVL. Now, investors are interested in this and think local mobility plays can be valuable solutions,” CEO Damilola Olokesusi said. “We just made the right decision for the company at this particular right time so we can get ready for the opportunity that happens after. Now we are ready to take over the African market, starting with Nigeria and West African markets in the next couple of months.”

What Drew The Investors In?

Shuttlers has grown by leaps and bounds since 2016, despite only raising $3,000 from friends and family and grants. The company says that its mobile app and website have over 10,000 users. On its platform, more than 100 unbranded and branded buses travel over 30 routes in Lagos, stopping at over 300 bus stops. Since the company’s beginning, they have documented more than 2 million travels. Olokesusi also stated that her company sells over 6,000 bus tickets per day, implying that over 3,000 individuals go in both directions on a regular basis.

According to Nneka Eze, the managing director at lead investor VestedWorld, the “investment will help Shuttlers extend its offering to adjacent markets and help solve inefficiencies in the transportation sector across regions in Africa.”

A Look At What Shuttlers Does

Shuttlers was formed in 2016 by CEO Damilola Olokesusi, a former chemical engineering graduate who once worked with an oil and gas firm, to address the issue of inefficient transportation expenditures in Lagos, Nigeria’s most famous city. Shuttlers provides enterprises with greater mobility options for their employees through its ridesharing platform.

The startup did not have a working mobile app when it first started in 2017. Instead, it used an unorthodox online strategy to engage with its customers, including Slack, email, and WhatsApp.

Even so, it was enough to get its first set of commercial clients on board. Shuttlers’ first B2B2C client, according to Olokesusi, was tech talent unicorn Andela.

The B2B2C plan is one of three main Shuttlers options; it allows employers to split transportation fares with their employees in any way they see suitable. B2B, in which company clients pay for all of their employees’ fares, and B2C, in which individual customers pay for their own fares, are the others.

Shuttlers now has a fully working app that allows mobile professionals on its three plans to schedule rides, thanks to a redesign in 2019. Commuters can book a seat on one of the buses that travel along planned and scheduled itineraries using the platform.

Commuters who use its service instead of competing ride-hailing services “without surges and peak-period pricing” save 80 percent, according to the business.

Live bus tracking, traffic-based routing, and digital payments are among the other features, according to the business. It also includes a subscription feature that allows commuters to plan rides ahead of time for a set length of time.

“Our mission is to transform the way people commute around the world by building a global partner network and connecting communities of shuttlers like we are presently doing in Lagos, Nigeria,” Olokesusi said in a statement.

The company has started operations in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, but Olokesusi does not disclose where else Shuttlers will expand to next, both within and outside of Nigeria.

Olokesusi is one of the few female African founders that have raised a large amount of money from venture capitalists this year. But her path to Shuttlers was by chance, as she tells me, as working in an oil and gas corporation was the first job she desired after graduating from university with a degree in chemical engineering.

Shuttlers mobility Shuttlers mobility

Learning From Swvl, The Egyptian Startup That Is Challenging Uber In North Africa and The Middle East

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer who has advised startups across Africa on issues such as startup funding (Venture Capital, Debt financing, private equity, angel investing etc), taxation, strategies, etc. He also has special focus on the protection of business or brands’ intellectual property rights ( such as trademark, patent or design) across Africa and other foreign jurisdictions.
He is well versed on issues of ESG (sustainability), media and entertainment law, corporate finance and governance.
He is also an award-winning write

Nigeria’s Ride-Sharing Service, Shuttlers Plans Abuja and Accra Expansion

March 13, 2021

Nigeria-based ride-sharing service Shuttlers is seeking to raise $1.5m by the end of the second quarter to expand to cities such as Abuja and Accra. The company, according to its CEO Damilola Olokesusi is also planning to start running school buses in Lagos when the school year starts in September. Shuttlers has run pilot school bus projects but implementation has been held up by Covid-19. This is buoyed by findings from the Danne Institute which states that in Lagos, eight million people struggle daily to move around in Lagos in five million vehicles on a tiny network of 9,204 roads. Households in Lagos on average spent 24% of their budget on transport, with the burden heaviest for low-income households, who spend 33%.

Damilola Olokesusi, CEO and co-founder Shuttlers

That doesn’t mean they get an efficient means of transport in return. An average of 264 cars per kilometre are on the roads in Lagos during rush hour, compared with the world average of 11 cars, the institute says.

Olokesusi co-founded the Shuttlers service in 2015 because as a young graduate she couldn’t afford a car but public transport was too uncomfortable to use. Larger companies were able to supply buses for their employees, but there was no practical solution for many people working at small or medium-sized companies, she says. The solution was for Shuttlers to rent buses from private bus owners.

Because the bus owners weren’t interested in smaller groups or individuals – the fastest way for them to fill the bus up was to rent it out to a large company. Shuttlers saw an opportunity to buy the seats at wholesale prices and then sell them at retail prices on its platform.

Shuttlers customers are a mixture of small and medium-sized companies and individuals. The company has sold more than 500m seats to date, and Olokesusi points to the impact in terms or reducing the number of cars on the road.

The fact that the founders are female made it harder to get early funding, she says. The logistical problems faced in Lagos were daunting. Those obstacles meant that it was critical to prove quickly that Shuttlers had a profitable business model, Olokesusi says. The company is making money, with revenue above $1m in 2020.

Corporate customers can subsidise or pay for their staff through a digital wallet system. Individuals also pay digitally and then scan a barcode with their mobile phones to show they have paid. The company has never accepted cash. In addition to the driver, the buses have stewards or “bus captains”, customers who have been given a discount to perform the role.

Though the Covi-19 pandemic adversely affected other businesses, it however led to increasing demand for the service as companies are looking to cut costs and outsource as much as possible. “People don’t want to use public transport” and private services are seen as “more reliable” in following anti-Covid rules, she says.

There are also plans to launch a women’s only bus service which will be equipped with learning apps that will enable customers to improve their digital and financial skills because the company believes that it will help people make the most of their time as they turn traffic time to learning time. Ride-sharing the company believe is part of the solution to beating traffic in congested West African cities.

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