NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 2 – Ride-hailing platform Bolt has said that it is looking to offer drivers vehicle financing offers to increase the number of customers on the platform.
The Estonian-based company said that this was informed by a rising demand for online taxi services.
E-hailing companies have been riding on the popularity of digital taxis that offer cheap fares and are easy to use.
“A key area that we are looking to focus on is how to get more drivers on the platform because there is an ever increasing demand from customers,” Bolt founder and CEO Markus Villig told Capital Business.
“Every single year, about a million customers sign up on our platform and they need to be serviced,” he added.
“So, we need to match that demand by adding more drivers to the platform. One of the ways to achieve this is through vehicle financing for drivers.”
The company was started in 2014 in Tallinn, Estonia, before it was rolled out in European countries and then to Africa.
On the continent, the company first launched in South Africa in 2016, before setting up in Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, and Tunisia.
The startup, which operates in 70 African cities, provides three main services: ride hailing, food delivery, and grocery delivery.
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Bolt Business, the company’s corporate travel arm, also has clients in Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Tanzania, and Kenya.
With 900,000 drivers and 500 employees spread across seven African markets, it currently serves over 47 million customers.
