Uganda: Travel platform Tripesa secures pre-seed funding

B2B travel platform Tripesa has closed a pre-seed round with participation from Eric Osiakwan, Future Africa, Consonance Investment Managers and LTNT Investments to support the company’s go to market in Uganda and Kenya before expanding to the rest of Africa.

Tripesa enables small business owners in tourism and hospitality to sell online and manage their entire business operations on a simple no-code platform. The platform allows businesses to build and manage a website, accept bookings and payments and access a customer relationship management dashboard.

Tripesa currently has over 260 tourism businesses in Uganda and Kenya on the platform.

David Gonahasa, co-founder and CEO of Tripesa said, “Micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in tourism took a heavy blow due to Covid-19 related disruptions in the past two years but Tripesa is leveraging technology to empower them with tools to help them recover much faster. The new normal for us is enabling small players to run their businesses from anywhere and serve customers round the clock with our localised travel and financial technology platform.”

Eric Osiakwan, founder of Chanzo Capital, one of the angel investors in Tripesa says, “MSMEs are truly the engine of economic growth in Africa where in some countries like Ghana, 85% of enterprises are MSMEs contributing about 70% of the country’s GDP. Our investment in Tripesa supports the development of the continent by unlocking the potential of MSMEs who often struggle with the complexity and cost of managing their business online and accessing source markets.”

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