NAIROBI (Reuters) – Kenyan taxi-hailing firm, Little, which has a partnership with telecoms operator Safaricom, has sold just under 10 percent of its shares to an unnamed Indian investor for $3 million, it said on Monday.
Kamal Budhabhatti, the CEO of the firm which was founded in 2016 and offers 12,000 rides a day in peak times, told Reuters the investment was unplanned and that Little would still raise another $100 million for pan-African expansion.
He said Little had started operations in Uganda and Rwanda would follow later in June, followed by Zambia, Ghana and Tanzania.
Little competes with Uber and Taxify. Little’ s parent company, Nairobi-based software developer Craft Silicon, has invested $6 million in the app.
Budhabhatti had told Reuters in September last year that the company, which has about 5,000 active drivers and 345,000 active users, would look towards Silicon Valley in the United States to raise its target of $100 million.
Reporting by Duncan Miriri, editing by Louise Heavens