#StartupStory: Youth get innovative with Afri Ride

That’s exactly the case with the creators behind the innovative ride-sharing app Afri Ride with its talented team of staff members who range in age from 20 to 36.

Mireille Umuhoza, COO of Afri Ride, shares the following about her experience working for Afri Ride.

Can you tell us a bit about Afri Ride?

Afri Ride is a young tech company that focuses on providing solutions through a single digital platform. Between fintech solutions, mobility, communication and logistics. These solutions are achieved through features on the app which allows for carpooling, peer-to-peer car rentals, peer-to-peer money sending as well as an all-purpose chat platform.

Mireille Umuhoza, COO of Afri Ride

When, how and why did you get started?

The first phase of Afri Ride was established in 2018 (ridesharing), this after observing the primitive nature of the current methods used to share rides/carpool. A lot of travellers used social media to meet travel mates or simply wait along the road to hitchhike. Afri Ride was created to allow these travellers to continue to travel together however the difference is the enhanced security when travelling with verified travellers.

Afri Ride launches in South Africa

23 Dec 2019

What is the core function of Afri Ride?

To offer multiple digital solutions in one convenient platform (all-in-one app)

What are some of the obstacles you've had to overcome since starting out?

Ensuring safety for our most vulnerable demographic (women), which gave birth to the women-only option.

Covid-19 and the national lockdown has impacted many businesses. What impact did it have on Afri Ride?

Contrary to the norm, Covid-19 has had a rather significantly positive impact on Afri Ride. As most of the scepticism around digital platforms was quickly shaken off and people realised the convenience and easy of traceability amongst travellers amongst the Covid-19 outbreak.

How did you prepare for the lockdown?

Afri Ride being a digital platform, meant that very little preparation had to be made to adapt to the lockdown as the business model had always engraved virtual operations.

What sort of assistance will you need going forward?

We are on the lookout for Series A funding

Are you communicating with your customers? If so, how?

We are in constant communication with our users, we have a 24-hour customer care centre and the integrated chat service, Mbira Chat which allows users to text/call us.

What do you predict the next 6 months will be like?

The next six months will be a moment of redress for many businesses and for Afri Ride it is going to be a moment for the market to continue to exercise the use of digital platforms in their normal everyday life.

What has been your biggest lesson from all this?

In technology, you need to put user-experience as the chief priority.