African travel service company GONA announced the completion of millions of dollars in pre-series A round of financing from investors that includes Qingliu Capital, Jiuhe Venture Capital and Shaka VC. This is according to a report by c.m.163.com.
Liu Xiaojun, founder and CEO of GONA, said that this round of financing will be used for team building and product technology upgrades.
GONA was established at the end of 2018. At this stage, the high-frequency scene of the minibus cuts into the local travel market, using technical means to improve operational efficiency, and at the same time solves the two major travel pains of inconvenience and inconvenience.
The team has fully completed localization in the first half of 2019. Currently, it is the main bus transportation business in the Lagos metropolitan area. There are thousands of active users and nearly 10,000 transactions every day.
According to GONA co-founder Gu Yuan, the company’s team members are located in China and Africa. The core members are from Huawei Africa, Didi, Morgan Stanley and other companies. The educational background includes Fudan University, Cornell University, New York University, UCLA and other famous universities.
Liu Xiaojun said that GONA’s next development focus is to further improve product operations, enhance technology reserves, continue to empower Lagos’ public transport services, and gradually expand its business to other hotspots in East and West Africa, striving to become Africa’s largest Travel platform.
Chen Hao, director of Qingliu Capital Investment, said that Qingliu Capital has long been optimistic about the development of GONA and will continue to pay attention to opportunities in the African market.
Hua Wei, the managing director of Jiuhe Venture Capital, said that the mobile Internet and demographic dividends in Africa are in a stage of rapid development. The age structure of the population is young and the economic growth rate is high. It is a hotbed for the birth of the Internet Super App. GONA is deeply involved in local travel services, covering users with high-frequency scenes and optimistic about the future development of GONA.
Larry Liu, a partner at ShakaVC, said that from the minibus scene, it provides more efficient and convenient travel services for hundreds of millions of Africans, and the market potential is huge.
As the first Chinese fund to focus on early African investment in Africa, ShakaVC will support the development of GONA in local resources, experience and capital.
