Safeboda a Ugandan ride-hailing company announced it will be leaving the Nigerian market, as a result of this development, thousands of motorbike riders and drivers will be thrown back into the job market.
Only three months have passed since the company added car-hailing to its list of services in addition to bike-hailing.
Although the specifics of the company’s exit are still hazy as of the time of the article, this will of course mean that verified passengers and drivers on the platform will be disengaged.
According to a report gathered by Nairametrics during an interrogation with one of the riders, he specifically said; he was not aware that the company was about to exit the country. The rider who was shocked to hear the news said:
As of this morning, everything was still going on as normal, there is no such information. We have not been told anything.”
This is a surprising development seeing as the company had just recently announced a new product. Earlier in September this year, the transport startup launched a car-hailing service called SafeCar in Uganda and Nigeria. Announcing the launch, SafeBoda’s Co-founder Rapa
Ricky Thomson, said:
“We’re very excited to launch SafeCar in our super App with a safer, more convenient solution than what is offered in the market. We’ve talked to drivers and passengers, tested our product, and we are going to change transportation in Uganda forever, we are going completely cashless.”
Earlier in March, the bike-hailing company celebrated crossing 4 million rides, and 50,000 deliveries with over 10,000 riders and 100,000 passengers. The startup launched in Ibadan, Nigeria, in December 2019 but began operations in March 2020.
This is the second time SafeBoda is exiting a market since its founding in 2017. In 2020 SafeBoda exited Kenya after extending its services to Nairobi less than two years earlier. It explained that it exited Kenya due to the negative effects of COVID-19 on its business.
