WhereIsMyTransport, a mobility startup based in South Africa, has shut down due to its inability to obtain the required funding to sustain its operations.
WhereIsMyTransport is a big data platform that connects, gathers, and integrates data for sustainable mobility in emerging markets. It was founded in 2016 and is available as an open data platform.
Cities utilize its products for service coordination and monitoring, operators for system integration, and passengers gain access to the platform via apps and endpoints linked to the WhereIsMyTransport platform.
With funding totaling over US $27 million, the company—which operated in both South Africa and Mexico—raised a US $14.5 million Series A extension round from investors, including the now-defunct Naspers Foundry. However, due to its inability to secure additional funding, founder Devin de Vries has now reached what he called “journey’s end” in a LinkedIn post.
The latest of several well-known and well-funded African startups to shut down this year due to a decline in liquidity in the global venture capital market is WhereIsMyTransport. Other well-known closures include Dash in Ghana, 54gene in Nigeria, and Sendy in Kenya.
“During our scrappy bootstrapped days in our garage – surrounded by friends – I never conceived all the places we would go. Graduating from that garage, we raised our first funding eight years ago. In the time since we grew to 140 strong, distributed over 22 countries. All-in-all we numbered 200 employees, supported by thousands of gig-mappers, enabling transit data in over 50 cities across four continents. Our products served millions of consumers, and supported customers to reach tens of millions of transit users,” de Vries said.
“Having failed to raise our round, we’ve stopped operations. Thank you to the investors who backed us along the way – without you our work would not have been possible. Thank you to the team who gave the best of themselves to support our mission to ‘empower people everywhere to get where they want to go’ – your passion and commitment drove me.”
