This week, CNN International’s ‘African Start-Up’ featured Ugochi Ugbomeh, a Nigerian entrepreneur who founded Tranzit-a mobile app that allows people to book taxis.
A bad experience with a taxi driver in Lagos three years ago sparked the idea for a reputable taxi service in Ugbomeh’s mind. She recounted the experience saying “I tried to book a cab, and the driver had already given me a price, but before I got to my destination, he had changed the price. And I said, we need to build something to stop transportation problem in Nigeria, because it is frustrating.”
In 2012, Ugbomeh and two partners founded the business, two years before Uber, the popular international car ordering service launched in Nigeria. Their aim was to capitalize on the country’s multi-million dollar taxi industry. Ugbomeh told ‘African Start-Up’: “In 2013 we did 20 or 30 jobs a week, and we were extremely happy that we had done that. Now we are talking about over 200 to 300 jobs in a week, so you can see the growth.”
When asked about the challenges faced at the beginning stages of building her business, Ugbomeh told ‘African Start-Up’: “At the beginning we had a challenge with the drivers, because we were new to the system. Most of these drivers are older and they don’t understand the smart phones, how they work, so there was an educational process.”
In 2013, Ugbomeh and her team expanded the business from taxi bookings to include the pick-up and delivery of goods. Now the company’s customers include; traders who hire riders daily, traders who hire riders weekly and one-off customers who need something to be delivered from point A to B.
With business in Lagos going stronger, Ugbomeh says she and her team are once again looking for ways to grow the company. Though they plan to expand even beyond the shores of Nigeria and into other parts of the world, the company is currently fine tuning plans to expand into other cities in Nigeria first.
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