{
  "id": 10946798,
  "title": "BuuPass started by selling bus tickets. Then it built the infrastructure.",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/30/buupass-started-by-selling-bus-tickets-then-it-built-the",
  "topic": "business",
  "section": "Business",
  "published": "2026-09-30T13:01:56.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "TechCabal",
    "slug": "techcabal",
    "url": "https://techcabal.com/2026/09/30/buupass-class-of-2016/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "In 2025, BuuPass had sold over 30 million travel tickets and processed more than $100 million in transactions, an impressive scale for a company that had started as a simple Kenyan travel booking startup. The transportation booking company had grown to operate in five African countries, offering software to transport operators, distributing bus tickets through banks and telcos, and managing a corporate travel platform. However, this was not the original vision of the founders. In 2015, Sonia Kabra, Wyclife Omondi, Iman Cooper, and Leslie Ossete, students at Earlham College in Indiana, came up with a unique idea: a solar-powered bus with Wi-Fi that would serve as an internet café when parked. They entered this concept into the Hult Prize competition, which awards funding to startups addressing social issues, but they were not the winners. The team returned to the drawing board and developed Magic Bus, a phone-based booking service for matatus, the privately operated minibuses that serve as the primary means of transportation in Kenya. Magic Bus won the Hult Prize in 2016, earning the founders $1 million and providing them with the resources to develop the first repeatable business: product development, an early phone-based booking service, a small team, and practical work to get operators and passengers using the service.",
  "summary": "BuuPass navigated a cofounder misappropriating over $100,000, COVID-19, multiple pivots in the past decade. Now, it processes $100 million in 2025.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}