Ugandan tourism-tech startup Tripesa has raised a pre-seed round of funding as it seeks product-market fit ahead of continental expansion. The startup has been mostly bootstrapped, though Eric Osiakwan is an angel investor, but in June secured an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding from Future Africa, Consonance Investment Managers and LTNT Investments. Gonahasa told Disrupt Africa the funding will be used to enable Tripesa to achieve product-market fit. “Tripesa is currently working on achieving product-market fit in Uganda and Kenya. The choice of these two markets is to try out cross-border functionality as Uganda and Kenya have a lot of cross-border travel with requirements to share information and payments. Post finding product-market fit, Tripesa intends to scale across the African continent,” he said. Tripesa today has over 260 – mainly small – businesses in Uganda and Kenya signed up to the platform, and continues to see daily growth, with key interest in the website building feature. The tourism industry earns Africa US$35 billion annually, and employs over 24 million people, with operations cutting across multiple sub-sectors like tour operators, travel agencies, tour guides, transport companies, souvenirs and trinkets, museums, events, F&B and many others.
SOURCE: DISRUPT AFRICA