Kenyan startup BuuPass expands into corporate travel with Gavanpass

Kenyan mobility startup BuuPass is expanding beyond its consumer-focused business with the introduction of a corporate travel platform, Gavanpass. The move signals a shift toward Africa’s largely untapped enterprise travel market. The Nairobi-based company revealed that more than 20 organisations across Kenya including banks, fintech firms, insurers, and manufacturers are already using the platform to manage their business travel needs.

Founded in 2017, BuuPass has spent the last several years building a digital marketplace for booking buses, trains, and flights. The company reports that it has sold over 30 million tickets to date and processed more than $100 million in travel transactions in the past year alone, with operations spanning Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa.

With Gavanpass, the company is now targeting corporate users, particularly finance and procurement teams responsible for managing travel budgets, as well as operations teams coordinating employee trips. The platform brings together bookings for flights, hotels, buses, ground transport, and group travel into a single system.

It also includes built-in approval workflows, policy controls, and real-time expense tracking, giving businesses greater oversight of travel spending.

Solving Africa’s Corporate Travel Inefficiencies

According to co-founder and co-CEO Sonia Kabra, the shift was driven by growing demand from enterprise clients. She noted that finance leaders are looking for more than basic booking tools; they need integrated systems that provide both convenience and control.

Globally, corporate travel can represent between 3% and 5% of company revenue. However, in many African markets, the process remains largely manual. Bookings are frequently handled through phone calls or messaging platforms, approvals are scattered across email threads, and reconciling expenses can take weeks—especially for businesses operating across multiple countries and currencies.

BuuPass believes many global corporate travel tools are not well suited to these conditions. Co-founder and co-CEO Wycliffe Omondi explained that most enterprise solutions are developed for other regions and later adapted for Africa, often missing key local challenges such as currency fluctuations and fragmented supplier networks.

Growth in Enterprise Software

The launch comes at a time when many African startups are shifting toward enterprise solutions to secure more predictable revenue streams, particularly as funding becomes harder to access and investors place greater emphasis on profitability.

Early investor FrontEnd Ventures said the new platform reflects the company’s ability to build products that respond directly to user needs. General partner Njeri Muhia noted that Gavanpass extends this approach into the enterprise space.

BuuPass plans to expand Gavanpass across sub-Saharan Africa in the coming months. The company is targeting businesses with operations in multiple countries, positioning the platform as a unified solution for managing travel, controlling costs, and ensuring compliance across borders.