Little App in Sh571m makeover to scale up digital platform services

Taxi ride-hailing company Little will spend $5 million (Sh571 million) to scale up its digital platform services, eyeing a larger slice of corporate market pie, and city dwellers.

This as the company announced plans to expand services and introduce new products like e-bicycles and e-scooters rentals in what is likely to revolutionise the transport sector in Kenyan cities.

Speaking to the media in Nairobi yesterday, Little’s chief executive Kamal Budhabhatti said the app will have more features to address fast changing technological needs in the Kenyan market.

“We have upgraded the Little App from just offering the ride hailing services to a one stop shop now addressing different challenges companies face. The added features are a plus to our over 2,000 corporate customers and others aspiring to join us,” said Budhabhatti.

Revamped platform

Under the revamped platform, Little has expanded to offer a wide variety of corporate services such as parcel, shuttle and utility services as well as a biometric system to track staff office attendance records.

“The staff attendance feature allows employees to track their logging in and out for various activities such as meetings amongst many,” said Budhabhatti. Safaricom chief business officer Chris Senanu said super applications such as one being fronted by Little is the way to go.

“The partnerships and ecosystem created by the new apps is important to our current world, this is the best lesson of entrepreneurship,” said Senanu.

With a presence in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Somalia, Little was launched in 2016 as a platform for users to connect with taxi services.

Budhabhatti said they will first pilot the micro-mobility project with the University of Nairobi and if successful, introduce it to other universities and structured estates.

“We are starting with micro-mobility services like bicycles and scooters and if that works out well, we will scale up to motor vehicles,” said Budhabhatti, adding that they will start with 200 and scale up to 10,000 as demand rises.  Users will hire the devices at the rate of Sh20 an hour.

Micro-mobility devices include e-bikes and electric scooters are popular in Western countries for their eco-friendly transport system, ability to resolve road congestion and offer a low cost personal transport.