Abidjan-based digital transportation startup Moja Ride has secured an undisclosed amount of funding from Toyota Tsusho Corporation as it looks to build out its platform.
Moja Ride provides a reservation and cashless payment system spanning multiple transport services, currently including over 1,200 taxis and buses.
The startup’s story began back in November 2015, when founder Jean Claude Gouesse was the recipient of a Grand Challenges grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in order to work on a solution to facilitate the adoption of digital payments by small merchants across Africa.
It is now expanding its system to coordinate service and passenger information, in an effort to improve passenger convenience and operating efficiency for business owners. It is hoped that this will lead to greater quality of the country’s public transport. Moja Ride will be assisted in this process with the investment, which comes from Toyota Tsusho’s newly-launched US$45 million Mobility 54 Investment fund, a corporate venture capital subsidiary of Toyota Tsusho group.
The undisclosed investment was made through the underwriting of convertible notes, the same style of investment recently used by the company when it invested in Kenyan transport Data Integrated.
“The reasons for the company’s selection for the special award and for the investment are in the hope of enhancing the quality of public transport services in West Africa, by supporting the deployment of services by Moja Ride, which target public transport operators,” Toyota Tsusho said in a statement.
