A South African transport mobility platform founded by students of the University of Cape Town, WhereIsMyTransport has raised a $1.85 million Series A round of funding which will be used to expand the business globally.
The funding round was led by Mexico-based mobility intelligence network Liil Ventures and includes Dutch impact investor Goodwell Investments, an earlier investor, according to Ventureburn.
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WhereIsMyTransport collects and analyzes in-depth data about formal and informal transport mobility which can be used to promote transport innovation by organizations in the private and public sectors.
The platform gives anyone the opportunity to build on the transport information or use it to develop software products such as
The platform recently completed its biggest data collection project to date in Mexico, collecting the world’s most complete dataset for integrated formal and informal public transport in the Mexico City metropolitan area, according to ITNewsAfrica.
It currently supports 30 cities in 10 countries in Africa and the Middle East.
Examples of ways the data could be used include planning future cities better, organizing public transport more efficiently or considering better routes for GPS firms to suggest to their users.
By 2017 more than 300 people and businesses had already signed up to work with the platform to develop their own products, according to Fin24.
The funding will be used to expand the platform’s digital mapping of formal and informal public transport networks into new emerging markets, including its first data collection projects in India, South East Asia and Latin America, according to Techfinancials.
The successful investment follows two earlier rounds of funding.
The startup raised $1.5 million from the Global Innovation Fund (GIF), Goodwell Investments and Bombardier in 2017, building on a $1.5 million investment the previous year from Omidyar Network,
Those two seed rounds combined with an initial $770,000 angel round in 2015 and the most recent Series A investment mean that the company has raised $5.8 million over the last few years.
Two years ago the platform won the 2017 Promising Transport Innovation Award at the annual summit of the International Transport Forum (ITF) in Leipzig, Germany, according to Fin24.
In the same year, WhereIsMyTransport was the only startup from Africa named by NewCities Foundation as the 2017 Global Urban Innovator, according to DisruptAfrica.
