In 2025, BuuPass sold more than 30 million travel tickets and processed over $100 million in transactions, a scale that would have been unimaginable for what began as a small Kenyan travel booking startup.
The transportation booking company now operates in five African countries, sells software to transport operators, distributes bus tickets through banks and telcos, and runs a corporate travel platform. None of that was in the original idea: put Wi-Fi on solar-powered buses.
Sonia Kabra, Wyclife Omondi, Iman Cooper, and Leslie Ossete were students at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, when they came up with it: a solar-powered bus with Wi-Fi that would double as an internet café when parked. They entered it in the campus qualifier for the Hult Prize, a global student competition that awards funding to businesses tackling social problems, in November 2015, but lost.
“One judge pointed out that even a million dollars would buy only a small fleet,” Kabra, co-CEO alongside Omondi, told TechCabal in an interview.
Originally published by TechCabal.